These Things Take Time
by checkerboreded
Summary: She stares at the label on the pills and wonders what her mother would do if she found her daughter on the bathroom floor, cold and dead and blue. AU. Eventual Faberry/Rucy. SEMI-HIATUS.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: So, it's AU, obviously. Most likely gonna be Faberry unless I have a personality switch halfway through, but whatever. You never know.

Uh, trigger warnings for lots of stuff; suicide, depression, eating disorders, self-harm (possibly) and maybe other things. Sorry.

...

She stares at the label on the pills - TAKE ONE TABLET BY MOUTH HALF AN HOUR BEFORE YOU WISH TO GO TO SLEEP - and the label on the mouthwash - INGREDIENTS: WATER, ALCOHOL (15 WT%) - and wonders what her mother would do if she found her daughter on the bathroom floor, cold and dead and blue.

She's not suicidal, because suicide is a sin "that hurts the soul of God", but if she wasn't religious, or if she didn't care about whether she went to hell or not, she thinks she would be.

But she's not, because she is religious, and she does care about whether or not she goes to hell - because burning for eternity would be just a tad uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable than trying to squeeze into size 9 jeans because she refuses to be bigger than a size 11.

The discomfort is worth the look that had lit up Judy's face when they were school shopping and Lucy had mumbled, "I'm a nine, mom," when she had walked to the cart and seen 12's and 14's resting daintily in the bright red cart.

She knows Frannie was a size 2 when she was a freshman. How could she forget the way her sisiter could wear size small shirts - extra small, sometimes, depending on the brand - while Lucy had to wear large men's hoodies to hide her less-than-toned abdomen and extra skinny jeans from the women's section in Target.

It's not that she hasn't tried to loose weight - she has. But she's too embarrassed to prance around a dance studio in a large tutu while everyone else sports a medium. She tries to eat right - her mom makes crazy healthy meals everynight for dinner - but nothing seems to change fast enough.

She knows it's unrealistic to expect one chicken breast and a third of a cup of brown rice with a side of brocolli to change anything dramatically. She really, really does.

What she doesn't know is if speeding up the process by sticking a toothbrush down her throat is a sin or not. She's not sure if they had bulimic's in 125 B.C., and she doesn't think it says anything about it in the bible.

She's too afraid to check, because something that feels so wrong - the dry heaving, the toothbrush hitting the back of her throat - and so right at the same time - the feeling of an empty stomach, and feeling pretty, even though she just vomited half digested food into the toilet - has to be a sin.

So she doesn't do it often. Partly because it's uncomfortable and her mouth tastes like bile and whatever they had for dinner for the rest of that night, and partly because her mom caught her on her last binge and she's been going to therapy for it ever since (therapy isn't cheap, and she doesn't want to waste her dad's money, so the only things she brushes with her toothbrush anymore is her teeth, not the back of her throat). But mostly because it could be wrong, according to God, who loves all people except those who sin. He sends those people to hell.

And she doesn't think she could take it if God didn't love her - just like her mom and dad and Frannie don't, because she's not the Fabray kind of perfect like they are.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: If this story goes too slow or too fast or it's unrealistic or whatever, let me know. I'll try and fix it and stuff.

…

It takes her five minutes when she gets up in the morning to pull on her new, dark wash, size nine jeans, but when she zips up the fly and pushes the silver button into it's slit, she feels great.

Until she pulls open her closet and looks at her shirts. They don't make tight denim shirts to slim you out like they make tight denim pants, so she has to settle for a loose, grey, Mckinley Spartans sweatshirt - a present from her dad that he had gotten her after he had taken her to see her first Spartan's home game when she was six. When she was still his little girl.

She's not anymore. Not really, and she can tell because the most he ever says to her anymore is "You're looking better. You've lost a bit of weight, haven't you?"

She knows she's a little too old for her daddy to tuck her into bed with a soft kiss on the forehead and a, "Goodnight, little Lucy Q," but that doesn't stop her from missing it.

...

The first day of school is really just a waste of time, she thinks, and she would have just skipped it if she didn't have a perfect attendance record (It's almost the only thing that's perfect about her, these days.)

So, she sits, and she waits through her first four periods while every single one of the teachers goes through every single one of the rules in the Mckinley High Handbook.

And every single time they start talking about the dress code, she looks out the window, and every single time, she gets yelled at to pay attention.

She's been here for four years. She doesn't need to pay attention to the rules in the handbook that she's already heard - and had to recite - three fucking times.

Needless to say, she can't wait for lunch.

...

She remembers how she used to sit at her own lunch table in grade school. Taking bites out of her tuna sandwich and nibbling on her apple while watching all the other kids trade pudding cups and Lunchables.

She hasn't sat alone at lunch in a while now, ever since Sam moved from Newport, Tennesse to Lima at the end of eight grade, but she doesn't think she'll ever forget how it felt to be so lonely all the time.

"Can I have your Jell-o?"

Lucy blinks up at Sam, who stares back with wide blue eyes and a mouthful of Cool Ranch Doritos that he swiped from one of the jocks. She laughs lightly, and digs in her lunch box for the plastic cup, sliding it across the table along with a spoon. "It's sugar-free. I'm not sure if you'll like it."

Sam scrunches up his nose, but peels off the white plastic top anyway. "Why do you eat this stuff?" He replaces the Doritos with a spoonful of Jell-o. "It tastes like squishy Kool-aid without the sugar."

"Sugar-free, Sam." She says and zips up her lunchbag. "And it's better for you."

Not that Sam had to really worry about eating unhealthy things. He was super-fit, with the abs and arm muscles to prove it, and Lucy was a little jealous.

She didn't want _abs_, or huge arm muscles, or to be Sam or whatever, but at least Sam never got made fun of for his weight. Only his mouth. (Which, really was understandable. It took her three weeks to stop staring.)

"Not for your taste buds," he says, and drops the empty cup onto the table. "That was disgusting."

"That's why you ate it all."

"I don't waste food." Sam frowns. He pokes at the "turkey dinner" on his tray and the mashed potatoes squish audiably when he flattens them with his spoon. "Except this. I'll waste this."

"If that's even food." Lucy says. "It could be some of that 'just add water' shit." (Yes, she knows cursing is a sin, but she hopes God understands peer pressure. She already gets called 'fat' on a daily basis, she doesn't need to be called a 'nun', too.)

Sam's spoon clatters on the plastic of the tray and he sits back, staring down at the questionable maybe-food in front of him. "I'm not hungry anymore."

Lucy snorts.

…

The thing about getting slushied regularly is that it never feels _regular_. There's nothing regular about ice chunks slapping her in the cheeks, lips, and eyelids and there's certainly nothing regular about sticky, lime flavored (today) syrup dripping down her sweater and into every crevice it can find.

Something that is regular, though, is her hearing the slap of a high five between two football players while she wipes the liquid from her eyes.

"Welcome back, Caboosey." The linebacker laughs in her face and she can smell his pizza breath. She grimaces, partly because of the smell and partly because something's just dripped into her bra.

She figures that Sam has Lucy Sense, or something, because when she shifts her books under her arm, his arm is suddenly there around her shoulder.

"Ugh, lime. That's the worst." He says into her ear and she doesn't find the strength to really respond, so he just steers her around the corner and then into the nearest bathroom.

"Sam." She says, when he pulls a chair over and sets it in front of the sink. He grabs her books and balances them on the porcelain edge of the sink. "You can't be in here."

"Yeah, well." He shrugs and sets his books down next to hers. Rolling up his sleeves, he motions for her to sit down. "I've never tried it, but I'm pretty sure washing your own hair in our school's sinks would be kind of hard."

She slides onto the chair, and when he twists the knobs and starts checking the temperature of the water she mutters, "I'm sorry", but he just smiles slightly and shakes his head.

"Close your eyes." He orders, and her head slips under the warm water. Fingers work the slush from her hair, and when she cracks her eyes open in a fit of rebellion, she watches the green water swirl down the drain. She sighs, and she feels Sam give her a reassuring scratch on the scalp before he shuts the water off.

"Uh." He says, and she can hear him shuffling around. "You cool with paper towels?"

She laughs. "It doesn't matter, Sam."

"Okay."

The sort-of-harsh paper being pushed onto her head is surprising, but not as surprising as her hearing the door open and a demanding, feminine voice saying, "You're a boy. You can't be in here."

Sam shifts awkwardly and the paper towels pause on Lucy's head. "Uh...well. She needed help."

"Why didn't she ask one of her girl friends, then?" Lucy is almost sure she can _hear_ the girl cross her arms, before she snorts into the sink.

"I'm right here, you know?" She lifts her head up, her neck aching slightly. Sam pulls his hands away and flicks the water from them before they make their home in his pockets. "And because I don't have any other friends."

"Oh." The girl softens slightly and Lucy sighs.

She doesn't want pity.

Her arms drop to her sides and she smooths out her skirt. "Forgive me...um...?"

She stares at Lucy and Lucy blinks back at her. "I—what?" She pulls her sleeves over her hands and sits up in the chair self-consciously.

"Your name. What's your name?"

"Oh. ( Lucy almost responds with "What are you wearing?" because, yes. The argyle is _that bad._) Um. Lucy. I'm Lucy." She clears her throat. "And, um. You?"

She flips her hair over her shoulder and Lucy raises an eyebrow while stifling a laugh. Sam snorts somewhere behind her.

"I'm Rachel. Barbra Berry." She moves forward and stops next to Lucy's chair with her hand extended. "You can just call me Rachel, of course."

"Of course." Lucy echos, and her mouth tilts up a little bit. She slowly raises her hand and grips Rachel's, giving it a small pull up and back down before she brings it back to her lap.

Rachel's handshake is firm, and it reminds her of her father's. She's never been on the receiving end of it, obviously, because _handshakes are for men and cheek kisses are for women, _but she's seen countless exchanges between him and the men at their church.

Maybe it's because her mind is a bit fried from confusion at meeting someone who hasn't thrown corn syrup and ice in her face or made train noises at her, but as soon as it clicks in her mind, she blurts, "You're Manhands."

She knows it was the wrong thing to say when Rachel's mouth sets in a line and she nods, posture rigid and fists balled and her sides.

"I—I didn't—I just—that's what, um, they call you. The popular kids."

Rachel nods. "Yes. It is."

"I—" She's horrible with words. It was supposed to be a simple statement, a fact, but instead she's ended up offending Rachel. "I'm sorry." For what, she's not sure. Her inability to work with words? "That didn't come out the way I, um, wanted it to."

Another hair flip, and Rachel's arms are crossed over her chest again. "It's fine." But it really doesn't seem fine at all.

Sam clears his throat in a way that he probably thinks is subtle.

Lucy looks from him to Rachel. "Oh, um, this is—" She rubs her lower lip between her teeth and motions him forward.

"Sam." He says, and gives a little awkward wave from his spot. "Sometimes Trouty Mouth."

"Pleasure."

He nods.

Lucy is used to awkward silences, but Sam, however, is not. He steps forward, suddenly, his hands popping out of his pockets and says, "Your sweater's all ruined, Lu. I'll go grab one of mine for you to borrow, okay? Okay." And then he's out the bathroom door before she can say 'thank you', or 'you're the best', or 'please don't leave me with this girl I don't even know Sam please'.

"He seems nice." Lucy looks up at Rachel. She's amused.

"I didn't think 'nice' and 'awkward' were synonymous."

Rachel puffs out a small laugh. He arms uncross and she sighs, pushing her sleeves up to her elbows.

"What are you doing?" Lucy asks.

Rachel leans over and switches on the sink in front of Lucy, skimming her fingers under the water. "Slushie stains are hard to get out as it is." She says. "Imagine if you let it sit all day."

Lucy just blinks at her, and Rachel motions at her torso. "It'd be easier if you took that off."

Self-consciousness smacks into her immediately and she folds her arms across herself. "I...um...I don't really—"

Rachel raises an eyebrow. "I'm not—I won't _do_ anything to you."

She doesn't want to say, 'it's not you, it's me', but there's really no other way to put it.

"It's not _you_." She says, and she fidgets with the pocket on her sweater and just sort of shrugs.

Sam chooses that moment to re-enter, grey Cocke County Fighting Cocks (she'd snorted when she'd first seen it, too) sweatshirt in hand. He raises it with a grin. "All set."

"Thanks, Sam." Lucy says, and then shifts uncomfortably when both him and Rachel glance at the red (and green, now) sweater still covering her body.

She has to close her eyes a remind herself not to be mad at them. _They don't know you have bodily issues. They don't know that you don't like to undress in front of people. They don't know._

Sucking in a deep breath—with difficulty, because her brain is screaming at her in her head; _don't do it, don't do it, don't let them see how fat you are—_she mumbles, "Turn around."

They comply, after they glance at each other, and Lucy pulls the garment over her head. "Sam, toss that to me."

He starts to turn around, and something cold runs down her spine while she screeches, "DON'T LOOK."

"Sorry, sorry." He tosses, and it hits the ground a couple of feet in front of her.

"Okay." Lucy says, once she's situated in Sam's XL hoodie. She leans down to grab hers and then hands it to Rachel who immediately sticks it into the sink and starts scrubbing the lime from it, occasionally using a dot of soap from the soap dispenser attached to the wall.

Lucy walks over to Sam. "Thanks."

He nods, smiles. "Anytime."

"I'm sorry I yelled at you."

He shakes his head and smiles a little. "No problem." He ruffles her hair a little bit.

Maybe it's weird that she thinks of Sam as her older brother, because some part of her knows that she should be thinking of him as something else—as her _boyfriend_, even—but she can't.

He has the blonde hair, fair skin, and athletic build to be a Fabray, she thinks. He would fit in just fine.

Far better than she did.

Something like jealousy coils low in her stomach, and her smile feels forced when she pushes on Sam's arm and says, "You're late for English."

He shrugs. "So are you."

"I have an A. You don't. Now...go."

She feels bad, because his dyslexia is a huge chunk of the reason he has a C-, but she takes one look at his bicep muscle rolling under his shirt and all the guilt practically disappears. "I'll catch up."

"I...um, okay. Bye, then." He back pedals a few steps before he spins out the door.

Lucy sighs, and then crosses her arms over her stomach again and walks over to the sink. "Any luck?"

Rachel hums some soft of affirmative, and then she's pulling the sweatshirt out of the sink and holding it up for Lucy to inspect.

"...lime free." Lucy says, with a bit of surprise. "That's—I'm impressed."

Rachel shrugs, and she pushes the damp material into Lucy's chest. "Don't be." She pulls paper towels from the wall and dries her hands. "Lots of practice."

Lucy almost says, "You too, huh?" but instead she just smiles, and nods.

"I'm late for History." Rachel announces, and she pulls her sleeves back down to her wrists. "It was nice to meet you, Lucy. I wish it was on better circumstances." She pulls on the handle to the door.

"Thank you, Rachel." Lucy says, and she holds up the sweater. "For...this."

Rachel smiles and nods back.

…

A/N: Criticisms welcomed. Actually, I encourage that. It helps me out.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Forgot to add the disclaimer.

Don't own Glee, never will.

Also, I have little knowledge of dyslexia. So do not take notes from me.

…

"You smell like lime."

"I smell like artificially lime flavored corn syrup."

Sam snorts down at his paper and finishes his sentence before sticking the eraser of his pencil into his mouth. "There's a difference?"

Lucy shrugs, and stares down at her own (completed) paper, before looking back up at Sam who's mouthing around his pencil and furrowing his brow.

"Alright?" She asks.

He nods, but continues squinting and mouthing, and his forehead stays crinkled. Lucy sighs, because even though Sam's dyslexia is bad, his pride is even worse. It's gotten better over the years, of course, but the little times that he gets stuck, like now, she knows just kill him.

She wants to say that she "understands", but she doesn't, and she knows that Sam knows that she doesn't. So she keeps her mouth shut, and she helps him like she has since eighth grade because the only thing that's worse than an irritated Sam is an irritated Sam that's irritated at _her._

Still, Sam looks like he's _breaking a sweat_, and she feels like she needs to ask, "What do you need help with?", so she does.

His face softens and his shoulders drop and he buries his face in the crook of his elbow and mumbles, "Eveything."

Lucy doesn't laugh at his slight immaturity. Instead, she just pulls his paper towards her and pokes him in the side with her pencil so he sits up while she asks him to tell her what he can't get.

"It's—everything." His face screws up and rubs his palm over his cheek in frustration. "I can't...just...all the words are just dancing all over the page and they won't _stop_."

"Do you need to use an aid or something?"

"No." Sam shakes his head. "No, I—no."

He thought it was childish, that only "little stupid children" (his words, not hers) needed to use those "stupid ugly things".

And he was not a little stupid child, even though he was acting like one.

"I know a lot of adults that still use them sometimes, you know—"

"I'm. Going. To. Do. This. By. Myself." He said, loudly, and she resisted the urge to shush him. They _were_ in the library.

"Okay. Fine. You're not using—you're not using anything. Fine." She wrings her hands together. "Take a break or something; your eyes are probably killing you."

"_You're_ killing me." He says, but he laughs and chuckles and rubs his eyes. "Damn. Just—screw English."

"English is fun." Lucy responds.

"When you're good at it." Sam says. "But when you can't do a book report for longer than an hour without the words jumping all over, English sucks."

She doesn't know what else to say besides, "I'm sorry."

"No, Lucy." He waves a hand, batting the words out of the air. "No."

"I—" She pauses, then shakes her head, and turns back to the paper on the desk, skimming through it.

The first three paragraphs are great—as great as hers, even. She can see the exact point in the paper when he gets frustrated and starts to give up, and it's around the fourth paragraph. The sentences are short and plain and lifeless.

Around the seventh is where things stop making sense. Words are misspelled and mixed up, there's an angry scribble here and there. A wet circle makes an 'and' smear into the 'the' next to it.

She slides it back. "The first part is fine. When you started kind of...getting..._mad_, it got bad." She turns the paper over and points to the bottom. "You spelled 'brings' with an 'e' instead of an 'I'."

Sam stares where his finger is pointing, and she prepares herself to pull it back in case he moves to rip it off or something.

Instead, he closes his eyes, laughs, and shakes his head before resting his forehead on his palm.

"What?"

He chuckles and says, "Brengs."

Her lips quirk up and she shakes her head, too, before laughing quietly under her breath.

He glances up at the clock and his laugh fades away before he starts gathering his things. "Five minutes." He says, and pulls his bag from it's hanging place on the back of his chair, stuffing his papers between the pages of his Physics notebook. "Then I get to go home and fix this."

"You mean—pretend to fix it." Lucy says, papers tucked safely into her bag. "While you play black-ops."

Sam shrugs. "My mom and dad don't know the difference, and that's good enough for me."

…

The controller hits the carpet heavily, and she watches—and tries not to laugh—while Sam crosses his arms over his chest and glares angrily at the TV screen.

"It's just a game, Sam." She couldn't help the amused tinge to her voice.

"You be quiet." He says. "Miss 276 kills."

She smirks a little bit, while he continues to pout at the screen, before she decides to lift his spirits with a, "That just means that you're a really good teacher, then."

"Right." He says, getting up. "Because your pupil beating you is such a _fantastic_ display of great teacher-ness."

She shrugs and gets up with him, pulling her (his) sweater down and out and grabbing her controller. She sets it on his computer desk. "Only by twenty."

"Only by twenty." He repeats under his breath. "Whatever."

Lucy rolls her eyes.

"Oh! Oh, hey." He turns back around. "You staying for dinner? My dad's making lasagna."

She'd love to nod and say, "Yeah, 'course, I love your dad's lasagna!" like the good best friend that she thinks she is, but all she heard come out of Sam's mouth is "My dad's making carbs, carbs, _carbs_." so she shakes her head and pulls her backpack onto her shoulders.

Sam puffs his lower lip out.

"Next time." She promises, and he sighs and hangs his head.

"Okay." He drags it out, like it's such a chore to say, and when he opens his arms, she steps into them immediately. "But that's what you said last time."

"_Next time._" Lucy says, and Sam sighs against her hair.

"Fine."

When she steps back she turns toward the door. "I'll wash this and bring it to you tomorrow." She pulls at her sleeve.

Sam shrugs and plops back onto his bed. "Tomorrow, whenever. It doesn't matter."

She smiles. "Thanks."

"Mmhmm. Later, Luce."

She passes by Mr. Evans on the way out, and when he shoots her a smile she shoots him one right back.

"You staying for dinner tonight, kiddo?"

She thinks of her waistline, smiles, and shakes her head. "No thanks. Not tonight."

He tuts. "Shame. Another time, then?"

"Definitely."

…

She figures that her and her car are about a perfect match, because they're almost one in the same. She's the black Jeep in a family of sleek, silver 2012 Subarus.

The only difference is that, whereas her Jeep is a '04, she considers herself about a '79 (on a good day).

…

It's crazy how home doesn't really smell like home to her. It smells like fabreeze and fabric softner (and if she's being dramatic, like a sucky childhood and broken dreams).

Like a show-house. Not an actual, lived-in _home._

"Lucy?" Someone rings from the kitchen. "Is that you, dear?"

She calls back, "Yeah," and leans her bag on the back of the couch before padding into the kitchen. Her mom's at the island in an apron, rolling chicken breasts into eggs and bread crumbs. Lucy leans her palms on the granite on the opposite side of Judy.

"Dinner?" She wonders.

Judy shrugs. "For your father. There's salads in the fridge," she jerks her neck in the general direction of the mentioned object, "for us girls."

It stings, just like it stings every time, right in the middle of her chest. "Awesome."

Her mom hums something noncomittal and then says, "Go get yourself cleaned up. Your father will be in in a few minutes."

"Okay." Lucy says. She pushes off the counter and turns on her heels, her sneakers dragging slightly on the tile, and her mom says to her back, "Shoes off in the house, Lucy."

Lucy snarks a sarcastic, "Yes ma'am," under her breath on her way up the stairs and when she pops the door open to her room, she slips her shoes off and tosses them into one corner.

She never really gave much thought to the fact that her mom rarely ever looks at her, so she doesn't know why she's doing it now, but the fact that Judy didn't look up once during that whole—albeit brief, but, come on, chicken breasts aren't that interesting—conversation_ bothers_ something in her.

…

"How was your first day of senior year, then?"

Her dad rarely ever asks about school unless he knows she had a quiz that day and wants to know what she got, otherwise he keeps quiet about McKinley.

"I—it was alright." She guesses that surprise was evident in her voice because he looks up from his chicken for a second before grabbing for his glass of wine.

He picks his fork back up, and Lucy thinks it's the end of the conversation, but then he says, "That's not your sweatshirt, is it?"

She blinks at him. "It's—no."

"What happened to yours?"

Lucy isn't quite sure about the proper way to explain to her parents the process of slushies and what happens afterwards. Like ruined clothes

Or, almost ruined.

"I had an—I tripped with my tray. At lunch. It was...messy."

"I see."

Russell nods.

Lucy nods.

Judy stares over her wine glass.

"I'm guessing that's Sam's, hmm?"

"Uh huh." She says.

Russell gives her a hard look. "Yes, sir."

"Yes, sir." Lucy repeats, and she puts down her fork. Pushing her plate away, she asks, "Can I be excused?"

Judy pipes, "You haven't eaten your carrots."

"I can't." She says, and stands up, removing her napkin from it's place on her lap and setting on top of the plate. "Braces." She runs her tongue over the brackets.

"Oh, that's right."

When she starts up the stairs, she stops when her dad calls, "Homework?"

"No." She adds the 'sir' after a few seconds.

…

She gets up at 6:45, so she usually always makes sure she's in bed and working on falling asleep at 10:30, but something else that she can't really place—and is making her stomach do nervous, jumpy loops—is swimming the back of her mind other than the usual disappointment.


	4. Chapter 4

For once, her morning goes off without a hitch.

Or substance.

She gives Sam back his sweater, grabs her books, and...goes to class.

No slushies, no "Hey, Caboosey!"s, no legs catching her shin and sending her and her books tumbling face first to the floor.

It's...nice. In a way.

But in another way, it just makes her skittish. Her body is tensed, shoulders slightly raised, ready to duck under a slushie shower or hop over conversed feet.

She's one hallway away from her class, and she pivots around the corner—

Her book lands on the floor, the cover bent awkwardly, pages most likely creased in half. One of her assignments is poking out of her notebook. She can see her name scribbled in the right corner.

_'Sup, Caboosey? Hahahahaha..._ She could hear Karofsky's voice already.

Her "awesome", is laced with sarcasm, and when she opens her eyes, instead of a Letterman jacket and broad shoulders, she's met with an owl sweater and a plaid skirt—

"Please forgive me, I wasn't aware someone else would be turning the corner at the same time that I was, and—" oh.

Oh. "Hi."

Rachel looks up from kneeling on the floor, her books tucked under her arm and Lucy's notebook grasped in her right hand.

Rachel stands up, and when Lucy's hand touches spiraled metal, she grips and pulls the book to her chest. Rachel straightens her bangs with a small hand before looking up.

"I—oh. Hello."

"I'm...sorry." She says. "For—I ran into you."

Rachel shakes her head. "If we're being fair, I ran into you."

"I—" Lucy takes a deep breath. "We ran into each other."

Rachel smiles slightly. "Okay."

Lucy nods and looks down, Rachel's skirt immediately catching her eye again, and...

She's actually almost positive that skirts have to be mid-thigh—or, that's what it says in the dress code, anyway (but then again, it also says no bullying in the rulebook, so...) —so she really has no idea how Rachel is getting away with _that_, because that skirt is very obviously much less than mid-thigh—

Why does she care?

_She cares because she wishes she had thighs like that._

But she doesn't, she has floppy pieces of skin that she has to shove into denim every morning and—well, Rachel could probably fit in a size 3 without even trying, but—

"I like your skirt." Well, it's better than the argyle.

"I—" Brown eyes look at plaid and then through lenses at hazel. "Thank you, Lucy."

"You look nice today."

"Same to you." Rachel says, and Lucy decides that Rachel is the nicest person she's ever met because there is nothing _nice_ about a hoodie and jeans that aren't your size.

"Slushie-free." She adds, sympathetic, pitying-if-you-squint smile on her lips.

Lucy's shoulders raise in a shrug, eyes moving from Rachel's legs to her face. "For now."

Shiny hair bobs when Rachel nods, and Lucy resists the urge to jump and pull away when Rachel places a hand on her bicep.

"I apologize for cutting this short, but—"

"C-class. Yeah, I've gotta...um. Me, too." She feels bad for interrupting, but she still feels the warmth of a palm through the cotton of her top and self-consciousness starts to bubble inside her chest. She moves to the right, and Rachel's hand goes back to steady her books. "But I'll—" She almost says 'see you later', but something that feels a lot like insecurity makes the words bunch up in the back of her throat.

…

She must scare Sam a little bit when she throws her plastic spoon down and asks, "Can we go sit with Rachel?", because he stops chewing and just stares at her.

"I—um. Why?" He looks over at her table.

Lucy looks over at her table, too, and watches Rachel take out a square container of grapes and pop the lid off of it, taking one into her mouth and looking around the lunch room while running a hand through her hair.

"She looks lonely."

"She's—this is going to sound really mean but...well—she's Rachel Berry. Of course she looks lonely. She is lonely."

She frowns. "Sam..."

"I'm not trying to be a dick. Really." Sam explains, taking a drink of his milk. "But if McKinley was a forest, she'd be like, the plant life. Bottom of the food chain."

Lucy snorts. "Then what does that make us?"

"I'd say...rabbits." Sam says. He points to the footballers. "They're the top, obviously. Lions." Lucy follows his finger and she watches Noah Puckerman fling ranch at Finn Hudson.

"I'm offended on their behalf. Lions are intelligent."

Sam laughs and shrugs. "Yeah, well." He takes another bite of pizza, and when Lucy ducks her head back down, but not before glancing over at Rachel one last time, Sam sighs and heaves himself up, large hands gripping the edge of his tray.

"I—" she stares up at him and he stares back expectantly. "What are you doing?"

"We're going to sit with Rachel." He says, and she stands up, fisting her lunch bag. "So you can stop staring at her from across the lunch room because – uh, it's kind of creeping me out."

The room seems like it gets quieter when they start walking over to the last table, and Lucy plucks at the front of her shirt to make it hang a bit looser in the front. She keeps her head down, avoiding any glances her way, and she ignores the "Toot-toot! Comin' through!" from someone a few tables back.

"Hope you don't mind." Sam says when he sits down next to Rachel. "She figured you could use some company." He nods to Lucy and she smiles slightly, slipping in across from them.

"I'm—thank you." Lucy can tell she's confused, but pleased, from the confused-but-pleased half-smile that pops up onto her lips when the grape freezes inches from her mouth. "That's—thank you."

"Yeah." Lucy says, and ducks her head. "It's...no problem?" Her shoulders rise in a slight shrug.

"What _is _that?" Sam says then, looking at Rachel's lunch with a mix of curiosity and fear.

"It's a tofurkey sandwich." Rachel says, and when she catches sight of Sam's face, she laughs. "It's, um. Like tofu."

Lucy remembers walking into the kitchen and watching her mom cook white, jiggly squares in a frying pan. She remembers the face her mom made when she had taste tested it at the dinner table, and she remembers never eating it again.

"That's like that, squishy, white, Jell-o type stuff that they have in like, the vegetarian aisle, right?" Rachel nods and Sam fake gags. "Sorry dude, but I don't get how you can eat that. It doesn't _smell_ like anything. Food is supposed to smell like _food_, you know?"

Rachel glances at him, amused, and Lucy chuckles.

"Would you like to try it?"

"No offense, but like. Hell, no."

…

She throws her bag over her shoulder and nods when Ms. Terri smiles at her on her way out, tugging her sweatshirt down and out, and turning out the door to make her way quietly and quickly down the hall.

People in Letterman jackets and Cheerio uniforms shoulder check her and sneer as she makes her way passed them, and she manages to ignore them, despite the fact that she just feels like sitting down and curling herself up into a ball on the (probably disgustingly filthy) hallway floor.

She manages not to, because the last class of the day just ended and for once she actually can't wait to get home.

Not because she wants to be home, really, but because at home there's only two people that make her feel like shit, as opposed to the hundreds that are milling about around her at the moment.

One weird thing she's actually crazily, exceptionally good at is opening her locker. And, yeah, no one really gives a flying fuck about whether she can do her combination with eyes closed or not, so she figures it's really a pretty damn useless skill, but fuck it if she doesn't feel at least a little bit of self-satisfaction when she does it anyway.

"I wanted to thank you for lunch."

She jumps at the unexpected voice and looks around the door of her locker to glance at Rachel. She gives her a half smile and dumps her Math book into her bag. "You already did."

"I figured I should do it again."

"Why?" Lucy shrugs and pushes the metal closed. "It's not a big deal. Really."

"It is to me. People aren't – no one really ever cares that I eat by myself most of the time."

"Those people are assholes, then." Lucy looks at her before before adding, "And I care. I know how that feels and it...sucks."

Lips disappear between teeth and Lucy nods down the rapidly emptying halls.

'I'll walk you out?' sounds plain creepy, even inside her own head, she just settles for a couple steps toward the door and a "You coming?"

"Oh. Of course."

They fall into step, Rachel's flats making noisy claps on the floor while Lucy's sneakers tap almost silently.

She pushes the door open, the cool air feeling fantastic after being trapped in a non air-conditioned building all day, and stops at the top of the steps, hands in her pockets. She hears Rachel murmur, "Oh, there's Dad," and is about to look up and stutter some type of goodbye when Rachel calls her name.

"I – yeah?"

Rachel looks like she's regretting even trying to start this conversation, and Lucy just stands there, shifting from side to side, making her bag bump against her hip, while Rachel tries to figure out whatever she needs to say.

She finally spits, "Are we friends?", and Lucy can see her physically restraining herself from clapping a hand over her mouth. She smiles despite not meaning to.

She settles with, "Do you want to be?" and mentally adds the _because holy shit, I could use all the friends I can get_, and when Rachel nods, she returns it.

"Cool." She says, and then a horn rings out, along with a shout of, "Oh, Rachel!", making the shorter girl's cheeks tint pink and Lucy's smile stretch into something of a grin.

"I'm – I'm sorry, that is so...embarrassing – "

"It's fine." She says. "I get it. Parents." Except she kind of doesn't get it, because her parents just save all the embarrassing comments and discussions for the (dis)comfort of her own home.

Rachel nods, and she looks like she's going to make a move to step forward, prompting Lucy to raise an eyebrow and tilt backward just the slightest bit.

"I have to go. Um, can I – should I hug you?"

"I'd prefer if you didn't. I have, um, personal space issues."

"Oh." Rachel says. "Of course."

"But we can...high-five, or something?"

"Okay."

So she raises her hand and Rachel taps it with her own, smiling and uttering a 'bye' as she hops down the steps.

Lucy can't help but laugh a little when she hears a, "See you tomorrow!" and then a door shut and a car starting.

…

A/N: I don't know why Rachel still gets picked up by her dads, either.

Shrugs.


	5. Chapter 5

"So, are you and Rachel buddies now, or what?"

She shrugs. "You could say that. I guess."

"You guess?" Sam says, and presses the start button on the controller so he can gape at Lucy properly."You gave her a high-five. And you like, hate physical connection or whatever."

Lucy ignores the part of her that feels a need to be offended because...well. It _is_ true. "It was a _high-five_, Sam. Calm down."

Sam says, "I am calm. I'm perfectly calm. I'm just – making an observation."

Lucy puffs out an, "O...kay?" and then pulls the right trigger when Sam un-pauses, putting a bullet into a zombie's head, flinging animated gore everywhere.

"Actually," the pause screen comes up again, "I'm not calm. Or – I mean, I _am_, but – " He rubs a hand over his face and Lucy sits patiently, pulling at the hem of her shirt. "You know, it took me like, six months to even get a fu – a _freaking _fist bump from you. And then Rachel just like, what, gets a _high-five – _full palm-on-palm contact, mind you – "

"I know what a high-five is, Sam. Thanks."

" – and I mean, is she more...worthy or something?"

And then Lucy _gets _ it, and she knows that she should say, "Sam, no, you're the best friend anyone could ask for, really and blah blah blah" but she can't. Because Rachel is the first new thing – new good thing, anyway – that has happened to Lucy in a long time, and as much as she wants Sam to understand that she's happy he's there and puts up with all of her, she wants him to be happy for her just that little bit more.

"It was a high-five, not a marriage proposal, firstly, and _no _she's not 'more worthy', whatever the hell that is supposed to mean."

Sam shrugs, "Maybe I'm jealous or something, I don't know." He fiddles with the joystick on his controller. "But we're like, Mario and Luigi – " Lucy scoffs and laughs " – there's no room for a Yoshi or a Toad or a Princess Peach.

"Dynamic Duo just has a really nice ring to it."

She sighs. "I know."

…

The fifth step creaks when she pads downstairs. Her mom's at the counter, packing lunches for all of them. Her dad is at the table, reading the newspaper with a glass of orange juice (and vodka) beside him.

"Good morning."

"Morning." Judy replies, and looks up, smiling for a second before resuming her sandwich making. "Sleep well."

"Yeah." Lucy says.

"Yes ma'am." Russell corrects, flipping the page and giving Lucy a quick glance. "Respect, young lady."

"Right."

"You should have something for breakfast. There's apples on the counter."

"Braces, mom." A car horn sounds outside. "And Sam's here anyway."

"Right, right. Here." The paper bag is pushed across the counter. "Don't forget that."

She shoves it into her backpack. "Yeah. Thanks."

"Bye, dear."

"Bye, mom." She watches her dad flip to the finance page.

…

"Bad morning?" Sam wonders, when she gets into the truck and slams the door.

"You could say that." She responds, and pushes the heel of her palm into her eyes until she sees stars. She feels the truck rumble beneath her, and she feels the slight thump it makes every time it runs over something like a rock or hits a bump on the road.

It's becoming more frequent, she notices. Her dad not looking at her. He started in middle school, but it wasn't enough that she noticed, back then.

But now she does and – he won't even look at her, why won't he look at her –

"God, he won't even look at me." She doesn't even realize she's said it out loud until she feels the vibrations fading in her chest. Sam looks over at her.

She watches the blur of the houses pass by.

…

"Good morning, Lucy."

She shuts her locker, the metallic clang grinding on her nerves. "Morning."

She can feel something radiating off Sam. It's not distaste, but it's not anything joyous or happy either it's just sort of –

"Good morning, Sam."

"Rachel." He nods at her with a smile that sort of reaches his eyes. "What's up?"

"Nothing at all." She responds. "And, er, what's up with you?"

He just shakes his head, and when Lucy brings her book up to her chest, Rachel turns to her and says, "How was your evening?"

"I killed zombies for about two hours – and beat my high score – before I went home and stayed in my room, pretending that I don't exist" would probably sound way more pathetic than it does in her head, so she settles with a, "Nothing much," before adding a "You?"

"My evening was quite uneventful as well."

She feels arms wrap around her shoulders and she tenses until she smells Sam's cologne. "We should get to class. There's like, two minutes left."

Right then and there, Lucy is tempted to call Rachel Mother Teresa, because if she notices Sam's semi-obvious (distaste? Dislike? Annoyance?) of her, she doesn't say a word or bat an eye. Just utters an, "Oh, of course. Sorry for keeping you. I'll see you later." and waltzes off.

Lucy watches her go before Sam nudges her forward.

…

She's slushie-free for another day, which marks a new record for 'days that she hasn't had to change her clothes once in her whole high school career', and she feels wonderful. Not only because she's not feeling the stickiness around her whole body like she usually does at this time, but because not being taunted or made fun of is a kind of...liberating feeling.

Rachel's at her locker when she approaches, hair tucked back in a headband and backpack slung over her shoulders. She returns the smile that Rachel shoots her.

"Hi." Lucy says.

"Hi. How was your day?"

She pulls open her locker. "It was – good actually."

"That's good to hear."

"It's – " she pauses, her Trig book in hand. "Yeah. It is."

Rachel nods, and then Lucy kind of thinks for a second that she's some kind of Rachel-guru because she can tell that there's something that the girl needs to say or do otherwise she'll combust, or something. Implode.

"What's up?" She asks, closes her locker.

Rachel looks down and swallows. Pushes a stand of hair behind her ear. "What's your number?"

As unexpected as that was, really, her only reaction is to raise her eyebrow and wonder, "I – why?"

"I was thinking we could...text each other or – or something.

Lucy doesn't really text, besides Sam when he needs help with his homework or wants her to come over for lunch or dinner or just to hang out, and even then it's a 'yeah' here and a 'sorry, i've gotta study for this test' here.

She wonders if Rachel texts the way that she talks, and if Rachel texts like she talks sometimes, Lucy considers not giving it to her (not giving it to her politely of course) because she's not sure if her phone has the kind of storage needed for paragraphs and paragraphs of text.

She pulls out her phone and hands it over. "Yeah, sure."

…

**Hello.**

**Is this Lucy?**

She laughs, and looks at the name flashing across the screen. _Rachel* :-)._

Rachel with a smiley face. And an astric. A gold-star, she's said, when she had handed Lucy's phone back and her eyebrow raised in question.

"_It's kind of my thing."_

**well yeah. who'd you think it was? **She sends back, and she jerks back when she recieves a reply instantly.

**One can never be too careful. You could have given me someone else's number if you so desired and I would have been none the wiser.**

She frowns, wondering if she really seems like the type to do that, and then remembers that just because Rachel doesn't have any friends right now, doesn't mean that it's from lack of trying. Receiving the wrong number could be as routine as brushing her teeth, by now.

And that makes Lucy really sad for a reason she can't really...place.

**i wouldn't do that to you. **She sends, because she wouldn't. **that's...well. mean.**

**I'm sure that you of all people know that just because something is mean, doesn't guarantee that people won't do it.**

She nods to herself, because she does know that, and it kind of hurts how much she wishes she didn't.

**i know.**

**i'm sorry. even though that probably doesn't even mean anything because...yeah. but i'm sorry.**

She is. She's sorry, and then she's mad and wants to find the people Rachel is talking about and – and –

Well. Do _something_ to them. She's not a violent person, really, so maybe she'd...give them a dirty look. Or whatever.

Still.

**Don't be.**

**Are you doing homework?**

Lucy twirls her pencil around her fingers and taps the eraser on the cover of her book. **yeah. physics.**

**Oh. Sounds like fun.**

Lucy smiles. **i hope you're being sarcastic.**

**Haha. Yes.**

**good. because if you were a physics lover, i don't think we could be friends.**

**Oh?**

**Because I'm not really a "physics lover", per say, but I happen to enjoy it occasionally and I**

**Well I hope that's not a problem?**

It's funny and sad and endearing how serious Rachel seems to take things, and how she honestly thinks that Lucy is serious.

She's not picky with friends; she'd never deny someone friendship, even if they did love the Theory of Relativity, or whatever, a little too much.

**it was a joke, haha.**

**Well. I feel stupid.**

She laughs, even though it's not funny.

**you shouldn't. you're not.**

…

A/N: I apologize for confusion with the text messages and such. There are only so many ways to format.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: TW: implied suicidal thoughts.

…

Forty right, twenty-one left, two right.

She has Physics next. God, where the hell did she put her notebook –

"Hey Caboosey!"

What –

Oh.

"Toot toot, motherfucker!"

She thought (hoped) these were done.

And then she laughs, because two days of going home in the same clothes that you arrive in doesn't mean anything, really but –

And then there's tears in her eyes and she can't hear the laughter that's ringing out around her (she's knows it's there, it's always there, why the hell wouldn't it be there) because instead it's like her ears are seashells and she hears something rushing around in her her brain like water, or embarrassment, or pure fucking hatred for the people whose laughter she can't hear.

She's hyperventilating, she thinks. And crying, because the warm wetness slipping down her face feels too clean to be a slushie. Half because there's sugary syrup in her eyes-and yes it burns like fuck-and half because she's _crying_ and she doesn't know _why_ and that makes her cry even harder.

She's going home. She's skipping physics and trig and health and she's going _home_.

"Better chugga chugga, Caboosey, and go get yourself cleaned up!"

Oh, fuck _you_ –

She's going home. She's _done_.

She's done.

…

Her parents are going to be angry when they see the mess she made on the seat of her car. She knows they are.

But right now she doesn't care. She just wants to get home and clean up and crawl into bed and sleep and maybe never wake up.

That's her favorite thing, lately. Sleep. When you sleep you don't have to worry about anything, unless you're having a nightmare. But even then, you know, deep down in the back of your mind, that it's not real and that you're going to be alright.

That's the only time she ever gets that assurance; that little whisper that pokes at the back of her brain and says, "It's going to be alright, Lucy. You're going to be alright." Is when she sleeps.

She wonders if God will be the one to say that – if he ever does – and then she tries to imagine what his voice would sound like. If it would be deep and raspy but comforting like her dad's was when he'd read her to sleep before she learned how to do it herself.

Her jeans stick when she gets out of her car.

That blue imprint looks a lot sadder than it should.

…

"What – oh, dear."

Lucy is thrown off by the look on her mom's face before she realizes that no, it's not everyday that your daughter comes home stained blue and looking like that girl from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that got turned into a blueberry.

And like Violet Beauregarde couldn't resist eating that piece of gum, Lucy couldn't resist getting her hopes up.

"Why are you – what – I..." And then her mom's mouth flaps closed and Lucy just looks at her before she darts upstairs before she has to explain that she's covered in ice and corn syrup and blue dye and that this is what happens to the unpopular kids at her school.

She closes her door, and locks it, and then slips out of her shirt and her shoes and her pants and then goes into her bathroom and just stares at herself in the mirror.

Her glasses are crusted over and she's going to have a hell of a time cleaning those off, she's sure. Her hair is hanging wetly around her face and is sticking to her forehead and she just...stares emptily at her reflection and the blue dots on her bra and her stomach and her thighs and – well, fuck, no wonder her dad can't look at her she can't even look at herself – she makes herself _sick_ –

She hopes her mom doesn't come upstairs to check on her, but her heaving is pretty loud, she figures, so she just might.

She looks down at her sandwich and yogurt that she had for lunch, like the murky brown substance is going to tell her what to do, and then she reaches up and pushes the silver handle down and watches her not-answers twirl down the bowl.

Lucy reaches into the shower, turns the knob and lifts the switch and then hot water is pelting the bottom of the tub.

She strips, and ignores the horrible combination that vomit and slushie makes and falls into the stream.

The water burns, and it makes her skin turn pink.

She sits down, and she watches more not-answers go down the drain, this time tinted blue.

And then she thinks she cries, but she's not really sure. She can feel the sobs in her chest and she can feel how her body hiccups every so often, but she doesn't feel any tears; only the burn of the shower on her cheeks and her shoulders and her legs.

…

The softness of the inside of her sweats feel foreign, and her body still burns red.

She opens her medicine cabinet and she pulls out the sleeping pills and then takes them back to her bed, lays them on the pillow next to her.

TAKE ONE TABLET BY MOUTH HALF AN HOUR BEFORE YOU WISH TO GO TO SLEEP – she's read it over a million times.

Her door opens and she jumps and the bottle bounces on the pillow before it bounces to the carpet and she sits up and stares at Sam, who's standing in the doorway, hair mussed and eyes wide.

"I – hi."

He looks at the pills on the floor and then back up at Lucy, and she shrinks in on herself under his gaze and tucks her legs under her, hazel darting anywhere except towards him.

"Do you want to talk about it – "

"No." She says, and his mouth slaps shut.

"Okay."

But then he's moving over to the other side of the bed and she watches him as he slips his shoes of and shrugs out of his jacket and then slips onto the bed and tells her to, "Lay down," which she does, looking at him out of the side of her vision. He settles behind her and throws an arm over her waist, which makes her tense up, shoulders raised and body pulled taut like a guitar string.

"Relax." He says, and when she doesn't, he sighs and she feels his breath against her cheek.

"I don't know what else to do, you know? If you won't talk about it, I mean."

She nods, and then laughs because she doesn't know what else to do, either, but she says, "Okay," and then a lot softer, "Thanks."

…

Her dad comes in later, and he fixes both of them with a look that's half shocked and half confused when Sam rolls quickly out of bed and back into his shoes and jacket.

"Sir."

Russell nods at him. "It's getting a bit late, don't you think?"

And then Sam nods and then waves at her and leaves, even though it's only 5:23.

He fixes her with a look of disappointment, and it doesn't cut as much as she feels like it should.

Probably because it's disappointment at the fact that he just found a boy in her bed, and not just plain disappointment in _her_.

She expects him to yell at her. She's sure her mom's already informed him of her coming home in the middle of the day, dripping with 'God knows what'.

"There's a stain in the living room," he says, slowly, and then backs out of the room, one hand on the doorknob. His mouth tilts up the slightest bit, and for a moment Lucy thinks he looks almost sympathetic. "I'd like it cleaned by the time you go to bed."

"Yes." She remembers the, "Sir," this time.

…

Her mom makes her soup for dinner.

It's the 100 calorie brand, and she only eats half of the can, but it tastes better than it usually does, for some reason.

She almost considers asking if she can stay home from school tomorrow – because just thinking about it is making her stomach do little hops and turns – but she thinks better of it.

…

**You weren't at your locker after school today.**

**no. i uh. i left early.**

She hopes Rachel isn't one of those people that preaches about the importance of being at school and not skipping classes and she's almost prepared to get a two-message rant.

Instead she gets; **I see.**

And then; **I don't mean to intrude, but are you alright?**

**fine. **She replies.

**Oh, that's good. I was worried that something might be wrong.**

And then, when she doesn't answer; **Goodnight, Lucy.**

It's only 9:34.

…

The whispered, "Are you alright?" in her ear makes her jump a little, but when she turns and looks and sees Sam's blue eyes staring back at her, she goes back to her assignment.

"Yes. Fine."

"Are you – are you sure?" He presses, and then leans forward and says, "I – Lucy, if you need to talk about something – "

"I didn't want to talk about it last night," she says, through annoyance and gritted teeth. "And I don't want to talk about it now."

His brows furrow, "I'm just trying to help, Luce – "

"I know!"

The guy in front of her glances behind him.

"Are you ever going to want to talk about it?"

She squeezes her eyes shut.

"No."

…

"Is it alright if I text you again tonight?" An anxious Rachel wonders while Lucy spins the dial on her locker.

Lucy nods, and then adds as a second thought, "As long as you don't ask me if I'm okay or if I need to talk about anything or..something like that."

She knows Sam is just trying to help. She knows he's worried about her, because, shit, if she saw him cradling a pill bottle in his hand after a rough day, she'd be worried about him, too.

But she's sick of the mumbled inquiries. She doesn't need texted ones.

Rachel nods, but fixes Lucy with a look that she can't quite decipher before she utters an, "Okay."

…

Sam's truck pulls up in front of her house and she smiles a thanks before she stumbles out of it.

"Hey, Luce?" He wonders, and she pauses, hiking her backpack higher on her shoulder and giving him a slight nod to indicate that she's listening.

"Do you need a ride tomorrow?"

"Um." She gives him a weird look. "No. It's Friday."

(Tuesdays and Thursdays are carpool days. They read once in eight grade that riding together was better for the planet, and they vowed to carpool whenever they could once they both we're able to drive.)

"I know." He says. "I just thought – "

"I can drive myself to school, thanks." She snaps.

"I never said you couldn't – " He responds, caught off guard, and that annoys Lucy even more.

She hates that she's getting annoyed with Sam and Rachel and everybody all because of a stupid fucking slushie that she should have seen coming and that she should be used to by now.

"I'll see you, Sam." She needs to get into her house. Fresh air feels suffocating, and it's scaring her, because anybody knows that that's not how it's supposed to feel.

"...Later, Luce."

…

She watches her dad pour gin and watches her mom try to discreetly slip vodka into her sprite while she makes an extreme effort not to stare and/or vomit onto her salad.

…

Disappointment.

Maybe she really doesn't want her dad to look at her, because she knows that's all she'll see.

Disappointment.

…

A/N: R & R.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Okay, trigger warning for eating disorders.

…

Lucy shifts her books higher in her arms, willing them and pleading with them not to slip out of her sweaty hands. She's already ten minutes late – grape is the hardest color to get out – and when she runs around the corner she runs into something bright red and hard as a brick wall.

Her books clatter to the floor – joined by someone else's – and she mutters, "I'm so – wow, I'm really sorry," and begins gathering her books, trying to go as fast as she can.

"Pick my shit up, too." The person above her commands, and she closes her eyes, thinking that if she wishes and thinks hard enough, they'll disappear.

They don't, and when she still doesn't do what they've asked, they nudge her harshly in her knee with the toes of their sneaker. "C'mon, pick it up. This is part of your weight loss challenge," he sniggers.

And then it's like one of those scenes in those Lifetime movies where everything just slows down and desaturates and all the noise just becomes a din of sounds that blend over and under and through each other.

She doesn't know exactly what it is (and she's actually not sure she wants to, either) but she feels something break in her, somewhere, just shatter and clang to the ground in millions of pieces and with a hopeless look at the tile beneath her she realizes that it very well could be something – somewhere – that she can't fix. There very well could be too many pieces for her to pick up.

But she can pick up his books, so she does, and then straightens and hands it over to him, feeling like someone just dumped some more ice over her head. "H-here." She stutters.

"Later, Caboosey! Toot toot!" She barely feels the shoulder check he gives her.

…

She keeps her lunch firmly shoved in the bottom of her backpack while she moves with Rachel and Sam over to their table in the far corner and sits.

"Where's your food, Luce?" Sam wonders, a spaghetti noodle hanging out of his mouth.

"Oh," she feigns surprise. "Uh, shoot. I must have forgotten to grab it before I left the house."

"Do you want some of mine?" They both ask at the same time, and Lucy smiles before declining.

"You sure?" Sam wonders, again, and she nods, again.

"_C'mon...it's part of your weight loss challenge" –_

Ha. She toes her lunch back through her backpack.

She'll give him a fucking weight loss challenge.

…

When she gets home, her dad's not there, but her mom is. She's reading a magazine, one leg crossed over the other and small glasses on her face with a glass of something that actually doesn't look like alcohol.

"Hi, mom."

Judy looks up, and smiles, and Lucy toes off her shoes. "Hello, dear. How was school?"

Emotionally draining. Confidence crippling.

She shrugs. "It was fine," and then pads upstairs, her backpack bumping against her hip as she goes.

She thinks she can hear the crinkle and uncrinkle of her still full lunch bag with every step.

…

Her mom calls her down for dinner, and she responds with an, "I'm not hungry!"

She doesn't think it's going to work, and that she's going to have to go downstairs and push around her food to make it look like she's eaten something, but when she doesn't get a response back, she smiles with a sigh of relief, even though that is the exact opposite of what she's feeling right now.

…

"Mom, I'm not hungry."

"You didn't eat dinner last night, Lucy, of course you're hungry," Judy says, and pushes a single piece of toast towards her. "Eat."

"But I'm not – "

"Respect your mother, young lady," Russell butts in, face in his newspaper. "And do as you're told."

She grabs the toast off the plate, and then mumbles, "I gotta go," before she walks out the front door, a faint cry of, "Have a good day, dear!" echoing softly in her ears.

She rips off a piece of toast with her teeth, and then throws the rest into the dark blue, plastic dumpster at the end of their driveway.

…

"You forgot it again?" Rachel wonders curiously as Lucy sits down lunch less.

"Yeah," she sighs, heavily, as if she's disappointed, and then silently commends her acting abilities. "I was running late this morning."

"Oh, here." Sam says, and she watches as he rips his lunch in half and then hands it over to her on a napkin. "Have half."

She shakes her head, and then slides it back over to him slowly. "I don't like ham, Sam."

And then they all sort of chuckle, and Sam deepens his voice and says, "I do not like green eggs and Ham, I do not like them, Sam I Am," which makes them all chuckle some more.

"You sure, though?" And Lucy nods, before folding her arms on the table and setting her chin on them.

She watches Rachel open her mouth to say something out of the corner of her eye, and she interrupts, "No offense, but that looks gross, Rachel," and then Rachel pouts a little bit and takes a defeated bite out of her avocado and cheese wrap.

…

Lucy hates routine, so she figures that must be part of the reason that she hates school, besides the slushies and the people, because _routine _is essentially school in a nutshell.

She _routinely _gets harassed. Slushies are a _routine _thing. She can ignore the jocks and the Cheerios and the assholes because dealing with them is so _routine _that most of the time her emotions and actions and words are on autopilot.

Most of the time.

But there's something weird about the way that Rachel meets her at her locker at the end of every day. To anybody, really, that would seem routine, but to Lucy, it doesn't. It's different somehow, just something continuous that you always expect to be there.

A constant.

And for some reason that scares her a little bit.

"Hello."

"Hey." She greets, after she gets her locker open. "God, I have so much – "

A deep, twisting sound interrupts her, and she struggles to keep a straight face when her heart suddenly starts beating twice the normal rate.

"Hungry?" Rachel teases, and Lucy forces a tight smile and an even tighter shake of the head.

"No." She closes her locker, pulls her hoodie down lower. "I'll text you?"

"Okay." Rachel says, and then raises her hand.

Lucy taps it lightly with her own, and then backpedals down the hall. "See you later."

She can see Rachel's perfectly white grin from halfway down the hall. "Bye!"

…

Salad.

Salad salad salad.

It's all she ever seems to eat, sometimes. All her mother ever seems to cook.

She doesn't know _why_. It's obviously not working. She's still chubby in every sense of the word.

She rolls a carrot across her plate with the blades of her fork, drips dressing from a green leaf to a purple one, spears a crouton before she rubs it off on the edge of the bowl and repeats the process.

Lucy reaches for a sip of water, and then looks across the table at her mother doing the same while glancing at her dad, who's saying something either not important, or something she doesn't care about. Probably both.

Maybe it's an art, or maybe it's just been years of practice, but she notices how her mom can always seem so interested in what her father's saying – what new clients he had today, how many people he fired, how much money he makes, how many hours he cut – boring stuff. Unimportant things.

But Judy still manages to glance up at the head of the table like she's staring at a walking and talking decoration magazine.

And that is saying something, because she knows how much her mom loves to decorate, even if she hasn't done it in a while.

"Aren't you going to eat, dear?" Her mother says, and Lucy looks up and gives her a shrug, impaling the crumbling crouton. "I'm not hungry."

That's a lie. She's been hungry since this morning, when she didn't eat the toast she was given. She thinks, wonders morbidly for a second, if this is how all those starving people in third-world countries feel.

She can't compare herself, not really, anyway, because she lives in a first-world country and her family is considered hot stuff in the small community of Lima, Ohio.

She takes another sip of water, and watches as her father looks down at his food, before she looks back across at her mom. "Can I be excused?"

Her mom nods, and Lucy nods back before scooting out of her chair, up the stairs and to her desk, flipping open her laptop and waiting for it to boot up.

She doesn't know what makes her do it. It must have been a thought that she considered a split second too long for it to flit away.

She opens Google and her fingers jerk around the keys as she types in _eating disorders_.

All that pops up at first are treatments and causes, and a small little blurb that 1 out of 2 people will struggle with one.

Then a little farther down, she sees _symptoms_, which in her mind translates to, _things you need to make sure you don't do_.

She scrolls back up to the top of the page, and backspaces and starts typing _anorexia _before her phone buzzes and makes her jump in her chair and cross her hands in her lap guiltily.

Lucy slides her finger to unlock her phone.

**Hello!**

It's Rachel.

**hi.**

She clicks out of Google, goes to YouTube and types a random band name.

**How are you? What's up?**

**good. and uh. not much. you?**

**Is "not much" code for shooting animated zombies at Sam's?**

She shakes her head, and lets herself start to laugh and regret the day she told Rachel what her favorite hobby was.

**haha, no. i'm home.**

**and don't poke fun. you're making me self-conscious.**

She wishes she was, though, because as weird and contradicting as it sounds, running and ducking and jumping around a map while shooting flesh-eating and potentially death-bringing animations is oddly therapeutic for her.

But video games are for boys, and her dad won't even let her look at the Star Wars LEGOs let alone an Xbox.

**You shouldn't be.**

**According to Sam you're amazing at it.**

Lucy shrugs to herself, and clicks one of the videos in the suggestion box when the song is over.

**it's a video game. i'm amazing at it because i have no other way to spend my free time.**

Sleep, eat (well, not lately), homework, school, and shooting things. That's her routine, in a nutshell.

**and i might as well embrace it. i'm not good at much else.**

Except not eating.

She's a lot better at that than she though she'd be.

…

The encyclopedias are in the very back, very dusty part of the library. Lucy figures that they just kind of shoved them back here when technology rendered them useless. Why spend five minutes looking for something when you can plug it into Google and have it find it for you in less than a second.

But the computers at McKinley are slower than her Grandma Francine in a walker, and she doesn't really know what the school deems appropriate enough to be searched on the internet, even though she knows that 'eating disorders' doesn't really sound appropriate at all.

She sets her bag down on a table, and pulls a Britannica from the shelf, flipping through the pages until she's in the A's, her eyes scanning across the two words on the tops of the pages.

She feels like she's crazy for doing this, and in a way she kind of is, both for starting a disorderly eating habit and now searching for more information on it in her school's library.

Lucy about jumps on top of the bookcase when someone says, "hey," behind her.

She turns. "I um. Hi."

Rachel smiles, and sets her bag down next to Lucy's before taking a few steps towards her and attempting to glance over her shoulder. "What are you reading?"

"Uh." Lucy snaps the books closed, and puts it back on the shelf in a way that she hopes doesn't scream guilt. "An encyclopedia."

Rachel laughs, a tiny little chest giggle, and then wonders, "Why?"

Her shoulder's raise easily in a shrug. "Just to."

"I see." Rachel nods, and then glances at the book that Lucy just put back before looking at Lucy herself. "I wanted to ask you a favor."

Lucy slides by Rachel and tosses her backpack over her shoulder, gripping the strap. "Shoot."

"You have a good grade in Trig, right?"

"Uh, yeah?" Lucy furrows her brow in confusion. "Is that really all you were – "

"No, no, no it wasn't." She unzips her bag and sits down and pulls a book and some papers onto the table. "I was wondering – well, if you don't mind – if you would maybe – "

"Tutor you?" Lucy guesses, and Rachel smiles sheepishly and nods. Lucy nods back and then pulls a pencil out of her bag and sits next to Rachel. "I thought you were good at everything."

"I'm good at a lot of things." Rachel says, and then writes down some numbers before flipping the page. "Math is not one of those things."

"Any type of math?"

"Most types of math." Rachel corrects.

"Most types of math." Lucy repeats, a small smirk on her face.

Their free period is only so long, but towards the end of it she already notices Rachel getting it a little better.

"I'm a crap teacher, probably, because I have almost no patience, but um. I hope I helped at least a little bit."

Rachel nods, and then gathers her stuff and pushes it into her bag. "You did, thank you," Rachel says, and then smiles over at her.

And Lucy smiles back because it seems like such a natural thing to do, which is a little bit...crazy.

She waves and watches Rachel disappear towards the entrance.

Good crazy. But still crazy.

…

Lucy watches Sam's head bob through the crowd on his way over to her locker. She smiles at him and he smiles back, giving a small wave. She returns to throwing things into her bag. He leans into the locker next to hers.

"Hey."

"Hi." Her locker shuts. "'Sup?"

He shakes his head, and then smiles over her shoulder with a small head nod.

"Hi, Sam." Rachel says, and moves to stand next to Lucy. "Have a good day?"

"Uh, yeah." He nods. "Yeah. Thanks for asking. You?"

"I did." She says, and then nudges Lucy in the side. "What about you?"

"Don't." She mumbles back and watches Rachel's face fall a tiny bit before she adds. "Fine. It was fine."

Sam butts in awkwardly with a "So, um. You guys wanna come over?" and Rachel looks shocked before she slowly agrees.

"Luce?"

Lucy nods. "Yeah, sure."

…

Her kill/death ratio is plummeting, spiraling into a deep, dark abyss and she's not sure if she'll ever get it out again.

"You have got to be – " she shoots at someone as they duck around a building, then gets knifed in the back "– kidding me. Wow. Alright."

Sam just laughs, a joyful smile on his face as he gets a double kill and rockets himself into third place. "Hell. Yes."

Lucy sets her controller down in frustration, pushing her glasses up onto her forehead and rubbing at her eyes.

It's probably more than a little pathetic how much emotion she's feeling over a fucking _video game_, but killing people (virtual people, thank you) is like her escape.

She's failing at escaping, so hypothetically speaking, or thinking, she's trapped and that's –

Those aren't good thoughts to be thinking. That kind of stuff leads to depression. She read that in a magazine or something once, she thinks.

Lucy looks over her shoulder at Rachel, who's spread out across the bed on her stomach, her chin on her forearms, staring semi-blankly at the TV.

"You bored?" She wonders, and Rachel's eyes swivel to hers that light up slightly when a small smile graces her features.

"Not at all."

She's probably lying, because some things are only fun when you're the one doing them, and video games are one of those things.

The game ends, and Lucy takes a glance at the scoreboard, spotting her user name next to the number 8 while _samtheman95 _is perched proudly next to a tiny number 2.

"Damn Luce." Sam chuckles a little bit and cracks his knuckles. "What happened?"

Lucy blows out a sigh and shrugs. "I...dunno."

And then she jumps because Rachel lets out a sound that's half-screech, half-excited yodel followed by a wide-eyed look at Sam when she asks, "Do you play?" and points to the acoustic in the corner.

Sam kind of snorts, and then gets of the floor and moves over to it, gripping the neck and swinging the strap over his shoulder. "Uh, yeah."

"Would you play something?" And Rachel looks up at him utterly starstruck, like she's never seen an actual guitar or guitar player in her life.

Which is understandable, because when Lucy first found out he played, she sat him down and watched his tiny, clumsy, still-learning fingers press down G7s and A minors.

"Sure." He says, and then sits back down on the floor, warming up with a few simple riffs and chord progressions. "Um. Any requests?"

Rachel slides down and joins them on the floor. "Mumford and Sons?"

"Okay." Sam says, and then clears his throat unnecessarily and starts a fast, uneven strumming pattern.

Lucy snorts at the song choice, and Sam gives her a semi-dirty look before looking back down at the fret board.

What she doesn't expect is for Rachel to jump in with the lyrics, and when she does it's like her voice starts pushing against Lucy's chest and she suddenly loses her ability to breathe.

She's heard some beautiful voices, because she's heard a lot of music, but all of them just get pushed to the back of her mind while she watches Rachel carefully drag out the lyrics, not one pitch out of place. She watches Sam stare at her with his mouth curved in a surprised smile, and he almost misses a chord.

At the last chorus, Sam drops out, and it's just Rachel's voice carrying throughout the room while Sam and Lucy just stare on wordlessly.

"Holy shit." Sam says when Rachel finishes, and Lucy nods in agreement while Rachel ducks her head and blushes a little bit.

"Thank you." She says, and pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. "I've been performing since I was very young so I – I've had lots of practice."

"I repeat; holy. Shit."

…

A/N: I guess the whole quality over quantity thing is true, because this is longer than other chapters, but I feel it isn't nearly as acceptable quality-wise.


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: I forgot to thank all the reviewers last time. Your feedback/support/just taking the time to review means loads to me. Thank you.

Also, the text messages might be kind of confusing, I know. I apologize.

Trigger warning for eating disorders.

…

Lucy pushes through the bathroom door, then turns and locks it and fishes the scale out from beside the toilet.

She takes a deep breath – and then gets dizzy.

Her hands find the edge of the sink and she grips with all her might, willing away the blackness at the edges of her vision.

When it does finally clear, she looks down, and steps on the scale, and then wonders if it was just a figment of her imagination or if the plastic really did creak that much under her weight.

Her teeth bite down on her lip, and she mentally counts down from three before she opens her eyes.

167.4 pounds.

And then she's on the floor and she's crying, and the scale is shoved back to it's place beside the toilet and that goddamned number just keeps swimming in front of her vision and she feels like she's in a nightmare that she'll never wake up from.

…

She's only eaten a salad (one half one day and another half the other day) in three days and she's starting to feel the repercussions.

Mr. Gomez's voice kind of rings in and out of her ears, and when they stand up to do the pledge of allegiance, she sits back down as soon as she can and puts her head on her desk, willing the black in her vision to go away.

"Hey." Someone whispers next to her, and she sits up and blinks over at Mike Chang, the only football player who's not even remotely as dickish as the rest of them. "You okay?"

"Uh – " Words get caught in her throat, and it's been so long since she's interacted with anybody other that Sam, Rachel, her parents, and Sam's parents that she thinks she's forgotten how to socialize like a normal human being.

"You just looked kind of, um, sick for a second." He explains, his eyebrows furrowed and his voice in a rough whisper.

"Oh." Lucy says. "I'm fine. I – yeah, I'm fine. But thank you."

He nods, and then leans back over into his desk and taps his pencil against his notebook.

…

"Bottoms up!"

There's something sort of invigorating about a morning slushie facial. Maybe it's the way that it wakes you up, or the way that you're suddenly aware of all the places that the slushie is dripping to.

She grits her teeth, because she just closed her locker, and then turns and is about to go and open it again when she feels her sneaker slip into something sticky and icy.

She doesn't even notice that she's falling backwards until her books hit the floor, followed by by a sudden blankness in her vision.

…

Her eyes open to two loud voices, one that's calling, "Luce? Luce, are you okay?" and the other one saying, "Oh my God.. Are you alright? You look a little sick, are you alright?".

Bracing her hands behind her she pushes up, and then feels an ache in her lower back that she's positive wasn't there a few minutes ago.

She's confused, and her back hurts, and she's dripping with slushie, so looking around she asks, "What happened?"

"You passed out." She recognizes the voice as Sam, as she recognizes the worry etched around his words as well.

"Oh." Lucy says, because she really can't think of anything else to say. Partly because, yes, her back is killing her in the way that it's a bit of a chore to try and focus on anything else, and partly because she's 99% sure that she knows why this happened.

"Are you okay?" And then Rachel's face is in her personal space, and she blinks behind her orange stained glasses in surprise. "Are you alright? Does it hurt anywhere? Do we need to go to the hospital? Oh, god, should I call 911?"

Her "I'm fine," isn't as convincing as it should be, but it stops Rachel from pulling her phone out of her backpack.

"Are you? Are you sure? Because if you're not – "

"Dude." Sam cuts in, a light laugh falling from his lips. "Chill out."

"Chill out? Chill – "

"Yeah, Rach. Um, chill out." Rachel glares at her a moment, but quickly gets over being interrupted when she remembers that Lucy is currently injured. "I just need to go – " she gets up, and then mutters a "wow" at the ache in her back " – um. Get cleaned up and stuff."

Her locker is right there, as are her ruined books, and the circle that had gathered around her slowly migrates down the hall with her, some people getting bored and leaving when she stops and opens her locker.

There's a fresh sweater and t-shirt mushed against some notebooks and the side of her locker, so she grabs them, and then tucks them under her arm and puts her History book in their place.

"Do you need help?" Rachel wonders with worried eyes.

Lucy moves to nod, but then subtly grips onto the lockers when the floor starts spinning underneath her.

"No." She says when she opens her eyes. "No, I've got it."

…

**Hey Lucy?**

**Lucy?**

**Lucy?!**

**Lucy...well, I don't know your middle name, but answer me!**

Those are the text messages that she wakes up to, reading them as she rubs the sleep out of her eyes and yawns through her morning breath. Her fingers tap out a reply quickly; she's almost sure that Rachel is about ten seconds away from calling her.

**you're lucky i'm awake. **It was only a half lie, really, and she didn't want to hurt her feelings by passive aggressively telling her that even though she is very much a morning person (crazily so, sometimes) not everybody is. And one of those everybodies would include Lucy.

**Oh. Hello.**

**did you really text me at **Lucy looks up at the clock in the corner of her phone**8:14 just to say 'hello'?**

**No! Well, I mean, I did text you to say hello, but not just for that.**

**what's up? **She clenches her eyes closed when a loud growl runs through her stomach and fists the sheets, half out of embarrassment and half because she's so hungry it actually is starting to sort of pain her.

**Would you maybe like to hang out today? If you're not busy, of course.**

Guiltily, Lucy realizes that it's never crossed her mind that she's never really hung out with Rachel outside of school besides that time at Sam's house. Whenever Lucy thinks of Rachel, there's always a tiled hallway in the background, filled with Cheerios and jocks and slushies.

**that'd be fun **she texts back, because it would. c**an i invite sam?**

Rachel's too nice to say know, she knows, so she opens up a conversation with Sam while she waits for Rachel's reply. y**ou wanna hang with rach today?**

**Of course! The more the merrier. **Is what Rachel texts back, and Lucy smiles slightly before tapping back to Sam.

**Tht question couldn't have waited til like 930 or w/e**

She snickers, and feels bad for a second, and then, **no.**

…

She doesn't really remember ever coming to the park, for some reason. She figures that she probably has before, because sometimes on of the only ways to calm down a little girl is to take her to the park and let her play on the swings for a little while.

She doesn't want to think about her dad as a "fun-sucker" – because that's a little bit immature and actually a little bit too silly to seriously describe her father – but if she can't even remember her last visit to the only park in the small town of Lima, Ohio, that must be what he is, in some weird, more-than-mildly-disturbing way.

There's a lake with a sort of dock thing extending into it, and since the swings are currently occupied by a family of five, they make their way over to it, Rachel sitting cross-legged, and smoothing down her skirt so she doesn't unintentionally flash anybody, Lucy sitting identically next to her, and Sam plopping down with his feet hanging over the edge, the toe of his worn sneaker skimming the water.

"It's a nice day." Rachel comments, and Lucy nods.

"Awesome fishing weather." Sam says, and leans back on his palms.

Lucy snorts, and doesn't look up from picking at the canvas on her shoe when she asks, "Are there even fish in there?"

"I think so. Like...trout, or something."

"What was that face for?" She hears Rachel wonder with a laugh, and then looks over at Sam who's blushing pink under his floppy bangs.

"Um. You know that Cheerio? Santana Lopez, I think."

Lucy nods, because she's pretty sure she's the one that came up with Lucy Caboosey in the first place.

"Well, um. She calls me Trouty Mouth." Lucy and Rachel have to stifle laughs. "Because my mouth to fave ratio is 'totally off', or something like that. And I – " He turns and frowns. "Come on guys, it's not funny."

"It's not." Lucy agrees through her laughter. It's cruel and hurtful, really.

But she's not laughing at the nickname itself, more so Sam's reaction. She notices the way he tries to tuck his lips into his mouth, but all that really does is make him look like an old man that lost his dentures.

…

One thing about Lucy that really only Sam and her parents know (and now Rachel, too) is that she's really, _really _amazing at climbing trees.

She guesses that since she never did go to the park that she had to figure out a way to entertain herself, and in her young mind, 'fun' involved scaling to the very top of the oak in her backyard.

On more than one occasion did she injure herself, and during the winter she still feels a bit of the ache in her forearm from the summer before fourth grade, when a branch broke and sent her spiraling to the ground.

It was worth it though, and despite both of her parents protests, as soon as she was able to maneuver around with the chunky purple cast on her arm, she was off to the top again, her darkening hair getting stuck in all the loose branches on her way up.

It's one of the few childhood things that she still has, because age and problems and teenage drama doesn't even come close to dampening the childlike spirit that seems to burst out from nowhere when she's sitting on one of the top branches of a tree.

She's not as high up as she would like to be, because she thinks that with her weight, it wouldn't really go over that well. Breaking her arm is an uncomfortable feeling that she's pretty sure she never wants to experience again.

She looks down, and she catches Sam and Rachel sitting on one of the lower branches, talking and laughing and hand gesturing and when Rachel catches her eye and smiles and gives her a little wave, she waves back, hair blowing into her eyes and her sneaker tapping against bark of the limb beneath her.

…

She weighs herself when she gets home.

163.

…

A/N: Read, review, all that stuff. It motivates me to write, you know.

Also, I changed the title. I thought it fit a little better.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: Trigger warning for eating disorders.

...

"You're not eating," is what her mom says so suddenly and so out of the blue that she actually jumps and hits her knee on the underside of the table before stuttering out a pathetic, "E-excuse me?"

"You – " Her mom takes a deep breath and then straightens her shoulders and then fixes Lucy with a hard look that looks very surprisingly sober despite the very large glass of wine in front of her. "You. Are not. Eating."

"I am."

"You're not!" Judy's palms smack the table angrily, and whether she's trying to get her point across or keep herself from breaking down and screaming at the dinner table, Lucy doesn't know.

She chances a glance at her father and is startled to see him paying attention, glancing between her and Judy with an almost nervous expression on his face.

Which is strange, because usually his sharp, distinguished Fabray features are devoid of all emotion.

"You're not eating, Lucy, and you haven't been for a while and you're – you're getting thinner, I can _see _ that – "

"Isn't that a good thing?" Lucy wonders, and she doesn't realize she's said it out loud until she notices the not-so-slight look of pain on her parents faces. She doesn't know what makes her press on. Maybe it's a nasty sense of satisfaction at finally seeing something resembling worry and care and love on her parent's faces. "That's what I'm supposed to be right?"

"You're supposed to be healthy, and this isn't – " The hitch in her father's voice is so foreign to her that her mind doesn't even register it. "It isn't."

"I'm fine." Lucy says, and she gets up, pushing her untouched plate towards the middle of the table.

"You didn't even touch your dinner."

"Stomach ache."

"Lucy – "

"I'm gonna go to bed. I'm fine."

Everyone says lying is hard, that you'll get tangled up in them and have to keep changing your story and remembering which lie you told to this person and which lie you told to the other person.

But in Lucy's experience, lying is one of the easiest things she's ever done in her life.

A well-placed "I'm not hungry," or "I'm alright," here, and she's home free, really.

…

Her mom doesn't bring it up anymore, and sometimes she wonders why she even answers the call for dinner, because all she does anyway is sit there and stare at her plate and sip her water while her mother shoots her worried glances over her salad/pasta/steak. Her dad keeps his head down, and doesn't talk besides answering Judy when she asks if he wants a refill of if he wants more mashed potatoes or if Lucy asks to be excused after her food's gone cold.

…

Lunch is awkward, and she doesn't know why.

She's wiping at her face subconsciously, wondering if there's some toothpaste on the side of her lip or if she has a really bad pimple that she hasn't noticed yet.

"What?" She finally asks when Sam's eyes flit up to her for what seems like the millionth time in the last five minutes. "Do I have something on my face?"

"No." He say to his food, and Lucy frowns before her eyebrows jump into her hairline when he suddenly looks up and sternly demands, "Where's your lunch?"

She starts to answer when he cuts in with, "And don't tell me you fucking forgot it, either," and that makes her pause and move he mouth wordlessly for a second because a.) that is actually what she was going to tell him and b.) she doesn't think she's ever heard Sam cuss like that without it being a part of the punchline of a joke or one of his impressions. She's never heard him do it with purpose.

"We're...worried, Lucy." Rachel says, gently, but her soft tone screams in Lucy's ears.

Her "Why?" comes out harsher and higher than expected, and both Sam's and Rachel's faces are ideal expressions of shock while some people at nearby tables twist around to find the source of the outburst.

"I mean, why." She's at a reasonable volume, now. "I'm fine."

"Don't _lie _to me, Luce – "

"You're not eating." Is what Rachel finally spits in a whisper, like it's something dirty that needs to be kept a secret, and Lucy feels some unreasonable anger flair up in her chest.

She's tired of it, that phrase, because that's all people seem to notice.

Not the fact that she's dropping pounds like a clumsy person drops valuable vases and that her jeans don't look like they're suffocating her anymore and that she's finally getting some semblance of the self-confidence back that she seemed to have lost when she started middle school.

She doesn't know what they expect her to do. They don't have to live like she does. Their parents love them regardless, whereas hers only pay attention to her if she's perfect. Skinny is perfect, and she's not perfect, so she equates herself as the imperfection of her family. The blemish on the otherwise flawless face of the Fabray clan.

It hurts, and it's a hurt they can't understand, no matter how hard they'll try, and no matter how hard they'll will her to get better. It doesn't work like that. And yeah, she's always dizzy, and yes, her stomach still does growl like a bitch sometimes, and yes, there have been times where she stares up at the ceiling at night, tears rolling silently down her face while her stomach feels like it's eating itself alive.

She takes comfort in that pain, because she weighs 149 pounds and her stomach is nearly flat and her jeans hang off her hips a bit loosely, now.

She scoffs as she gets up. "I've gotta go study for something." It's a shitty excuse, and she knows that they can tell, because Rachel furrows her brow and Sam frowns so hard she's worried his mouth might cramp up.

"Lucy, come on, we've gotta talk about this - "

She doesn't even flinch when he grips her upper arm; instead she gives him a hard glare and rips it out of his hand. "No, we don't."

They don't.

...

Halloween used to be her favorite holiday when she was younger.

She was able to dress up like a pretty little princess and all the parents would always tell her how pretty she looked and how much they liked her dress. Then she would walk around her neighborhood and get candy and when she got home, she'd eat it. (Her parents limited her to five pieces per night, but still.)

Maybe it's just the thought of even dressing up at all that makes her a little apprehensive to Halloween these days, or maybe it's the fact that now that she's older, however she dresses someone is going to recognize her one way or another. It's a small town, and she's lived here all her life, so of course they would.

And that's sort of the whole point of Halloween; it's a day for you to dress up and have fun and TP people's houses because no one knows it's you. It could be any one of the little kids disguised as the skeleton masked deviant who left a bag of flaming dog shit on your porch.

For the past couple years, all she's really done is handed out candy to all the little kids that rang the door bell and shouted "Trick or Treat!" in her face while her mom and dad were out at his annual company party.

She tosses the last Tootsie Roll into a Tinker Bell's bag and smiles when she spits a "Thanks!" between her buckteeth. Lucy switches off the porch light with a sigh, half-sad-that-it's-over and half-relieved.

She's just pushed the plastic bowl onto the kitchen counter when the doorbell rings.

"We're out of can...dy." She says, and then pauses before she guffaws.

She's seen a lot of Captain America's tonight, but Sam's definitely wins. Maybe it's the absence of the foam muscles, or how ridiculous Sam looks in that mask.

"I – well."

"That's about what I said." Rachel comments.

"You guys are no fun." Sam says, and Lucy steps back to let them into the house, shutting and locking the door behind her. "Where's your Halloween spirit?"

"In seventh grade." Rachel giggles and Lucy smiles lightly at her before leading them into the kitchen. "I have apple cider?"

"Sure."

"Is it vegan?"

Lucy flips over the packet. "I think so." She reaches for two cups.

"Do you not drink, either?"

She gives Sam a hard look, and she can tell by the way his lips clamp closed that he really didn't mean to say anything, but at the same time he's not going to take it back.

"If we're going to talk about that again – "

"No, no." He pulls the mask off of his head and runs a hand through his visibly sweaty hair. "I didn't – "

"Let's just not."

For a second, he's quiet, and Lucy is almost scared that he's going to say something regardless.

But he doesn't. "Okay."

"We're just – " She looks at Rachel and makes her falter a bit, but she continues. " – worried about you, is all. I've – look, Lucy, eating disorders are scary things – "

Eating disorders. She screws her eyes shut, tries to focus on the steady hum of the microwave, the smell of cinnamon and apples that's beginning to circulate around the room.

"Don't."

She has an eating disorder. Something about thinking it and hearing it out loud makes her want to vomit.

But she can't, because then they'll really want to talk about it, and she really _doesn't_.

"It's hot, be careful."

Sam sips at it seconds after she says it, and waves his arms in the air in exaggerated motions while he tries not to spit hot cider everywhere.

Lucy crosses her arms on the island and leans forward, resting her weight on her forearms. "Why didn't you dress up?" She nods at Rachel, who's blowing into her mug as she laughs lightly at Sam. "I figured you would be a Halloween-y person." Rachel shrugs.

"I am, kind of. It's just, not many people want to give out candy to the little girl with two dads."

"They can't just, refuse you candy." Leaning back, Sam rests his arm on the back of his chair. "I'm pretty sure that's rule number one in the rulebook."

"What rulebook?"

"The Halloween one." He's able to take a sip without burning the roof of his mouth, now. "Duh."

Rachel shrugs, and Lucy gives her a sympathetic half-smile that Rachel returns.

"Where's your parents?"

Lucy drums her fingers on the island in an unsteady pattern, her nails making a small ticking sound. "Uh, dad's Halloween party thing."

"You didn't go?"

She snorts, and then shakes her head. "No."

Sam nods, and Rachel looks at her curiously, but Lucy stares down at the table.

"Do you know when they're coming back?" is what Sam wonders, and Lucy is about to raise her shoulders in a shrug when she hears the front door open.

"Lucy? You home?"

"I – " She looks at Sam and Rachel, sitting at the counter, hands curled around their cups and then shout back, slowly and drawn out, "...yeah."

"Oh, good." She hears her mom say as her footsteps get closer. "You got rid of all the candy, right?"

"Yeah."

If her mom is surprised to see two other teenagers in her kitchen, she doesn't really show it; just a slight raise of the eyebrows and a happy, "Oh, hello."

"Hey, Mrs. Fabray." Sam gives her a polite nod.

"Sam. And who's your other friend, Lucy?"

Rachel smiles, and then walks over to her mom and sticks her hand out. "Rachel Berry."

Judy laughs, and then takes her hand. "Nice to meet you."

"You, too."

Her dad walks around the corner then, and his eyebrows shoot up in question at the two unexpected people in his home. "...good evening."

"Um, hi Mr. Fabray." Sam says, and Lucy watches as he averts his eyes quickly, staring down into his rapidly emptying cup.

"Sam. How are you?"

"Good, and you?"

"Fine."

It's so painfully awkward and formal that Lucy feels like she's actually suffocating on something in the air. It's nothing like when she goes over to Sam's house and his parents wrap her in hugs and ask her how she's doing and how school went and if she wants to stay for dinner.

Before Russell has a chance to ask, Rachel's holding her hand out with a, "Rachel Berry. Nice to meet you."

He takes her hand and gives is a small shake. "Berry?"

"I – yes, sir."

"Oh." And then something like realization washes over his face and he discreetly wipes his hand on his slacks. "You're the girl with two fathers, correct."

"I'm –" Rachel frowns. "Yes."

Lucy watches Sam turn in his stool out of the corner of her eye and she stands up straight. "Dad – "

"I'm sorry."

Rachel blinks, confused. "Why?"

Russell shakes his head. "You're a lovely girl, I'm sure, but having to live with that _filth_ – "

"_Excuse me _– "

"_Dad_!"

It's almost a shout, and everyone quiets and looks at her when she tugs Sam off the stool by his sleeve and moves to stand halfway between Russell and Rachel.

"Let's go." It's quiet, so only Rachel can hear, and she prays that Rachel will listen to her.

Rachel's fist uncurl and her shoulders slump and she murmurs back, "Okay."

…

"I'm sorry." Is all Lucy can really think to say once they're out of the house and at the end of the driveway. "I'm just – wow, I'm sorry."

"It's fine." Rachel says plainly. "It's not your fault."

Except Lucy feels like it kind of is, because those are her parents and that's her family. She is connected to them, after all, so she thinks she should take some of the blame.

"I'm still sorry."

Rachel smiles. "It's okay."

"You probably shouldn't come over again." Lucy says, and not because she doesn't want her over but because she knows it wouldn't be good for pretty much anyone if that ever happened again.

"Probably not."

…

A/N: Read, review, favorite, all that stuff. It's makes me happy.


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: Trigger warning for eating disorders.

...

Rachel just marches right up to her and says, "You're coming over," with an expression that just screams 'and if you say no I'll drag you there by your ear anyway, so just say yes and make all of our lives a little bit easier'.

Lucy just raises an eyebrow and then adjusts her backpack on her shoulder and shrugs an, "Alright."

…

"I'm not getting in the car." Lucy says, and she grips the railing of the stairs so hard that her knuckles turn white. Rachel's hand is insistent on her wrist, trying – and failing – to tug her along.

"Lucy." Rachel huffs. "It's just my daddy."

"It's – " Lucy can't help but puff out a laugh at 'daddy', but she quickly recovers. "He won't like me."

"He likes everyone." Rachel whines. "Come on." She glances over he shoulder at the silver car waiting patiently in the middle of the parking lot. Lucy follows her gaze and gulps, thinking it looks more like her deathbed than a Hybrid.

"No one likes me. He won't like me."

"Sam likes you. I like you." Rachel states, impatiently.

Lucy's stomach hops a little bit. "Um – thanks."

Rachel halts for a second, slightly startled, before she smiles. "You're welcome."

"I'm still not getting in that car." And then Lucy's hand squeezes the railing again when Rachel's hand tightens around her wrist and tugs some more.

"You're acting like a _child_."

Lucy corrects, "We're both acting like children," which makes Rachel laugh and agree.

"If you stop acting like a child, I'll stop acting like a child, and then we can both get on with our lives."

Someone coughs behind them, and Lucy's neck almost breaks in half when she whips her head around to find the source of the noise.

"Um. Hi. Have you guys seen Finn Hudson around here, by any chance?"

It's a tall, thin boy, and Lucy has to tilt her head up a little bit to look him in the face.

"Uh." She says, and then turns to Rachel, hoping she has an answer.

But instead, she just stares at Rachel while Rachel stares at Tall Thin Boy, and Lucy's almost positive that if this were a cartoon, Rachel's pupils would turn into hearts and bug out of her eye sockets.

"No." She states, half-frowning at Rachel and then turning and full-on frowning at him, because for some reason that's what her facial muscles are telling her to do. "No, we haven't. And we um. We actually have to go, so."

"Okay." He says, and then smiles at Rachel's trying-but-failing-to-be nonchalant stare. "Um. Yeah, okay. Thanks anyway, I guess."

They both watch him retreat back into the school, and then Lucy is pulling Rachel over to the car while muttering, "Close your mouth. You're drooling."

…

Lucy is sat in the very middle of the back seat, hands on her knees and shoulders tensed. She'd caught Rachel's eye in the rear view mirror and when she'd tried to smile, it came out as a look of moderate to severe anxiety.

Which she hopes Rachel understood, because her 'Daddy' was a tall, actually semi-muscular, African American man, and if anyone could induce even the slightest anxiety in anybody without even trying, it'd be him.

"So Lucy." Is what Leroy says, and she jumps a little bit in her seat, taking her suddenly sweaty palms and rubbing them on her jeans. "It's nice to finally meet you."

"Oh?" And after it's out of her mouth, she feels the need to slap herself.

"Mhm." He hums and Lucy watches him smile slightly. "Chatterbox here talks about you quite a bit."

She doesn't even need to look at Rachel to know that she's probably blushing and ducking her head in embarrassment. She smacks Leroy on the arm lightly. "Daddy."

"What? You do."

"Um, good things, I hope?" Lucy asks, and he nods.

"Always good things." And Lucy smiles and pokes Rachel on the elbow while Rachel bats her hand away with a, "Stop it," that Lucy is 100% positive she doesn't mean.

…

Lucy doesn't really know what she expected Rachel's room to look like, but it wasn't _this_; a _Wicked _poster on one wall, with various scribbles in Sharpie that Lucy guesses are names, playbills stacked neatly (and if she looked closely, in alphabetical order) on the white desk in the corner, along with a hairbrush, a jewelry box, and a lamp with a bedazzled shade.

And then she nearly smacks herself upside the head, because it's just so _Rachel Berry _that she doesn't know how she could have imagined it anyway else.

"Do you like it?" Rachel asks, almost embarrassed, her lip between her teeth and her hands clasped in front of her while she stands in the middle of the room.

Lucy, still looking around, replies, "I – yeah. Yes."

Rachel expels a breath then, and smiles. "Yay." She sits down on the floor, and then crosses her legs, making sure to adjust her skirt, and then pats the spot next to her. "Come on."

Lucy moves over to the spot, but then just stands there looking down at her sneakers while brown eyes glance up at her expectantly. "Why are we sitting on the floor?"

"I don't know. Because it's not what people usually do."

"But we are people. Shouldn't we do what they usually do?"

"Would you just sit down? I don't bite."

"I know," and she complies, settling down next to Rachel and folding her hands over her shins, tapping at the rubber soles of her shoes. "So what now?"

"I think – " She fiddles with her hands for a second before she tucks them into her lap. "Let's talk about Halloween."

Haha. "Let's not."

"We really need to." Rachel assures, but Lucy shakes her head, and keeps tapping. "Lucy."

"Rachel."

"We are – "

"No, we're no – "

"Do you have a problem with gay people?" Is what Rachel shoots out, and Lucy snaps her head up to look at the serious, determined look on her face.

She laughs inappropriately. "Why?"

"Because your father obviously does – "

"I'm _not_ my _dad_," and it comes out more biting and serious than she really means it to.

It's not that she means to be, and she knows that Rachel didn't mean for her to be, either, but she's offended. Because yes, she's his daughter, and yes, that's her _blood_, but even just the simple fact that Rachel feels the need to ask that question because of him sort of hurts something in her.

"Obviously." Rachel tries to joke, but her eyes stay firmly glued to the carpet underneath them. "Lucy? I didn't mean to – "

"I know." She says, even though she doesn't exactly know what Rachel didn't mean to do. "And no – to answer your question – I don't."

She's heard all the preachings, has heard her preacher the countless times that he's said, in that final voice, _it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve_, read the verses about how man shall not lie with man, and that homosexuals will never inherit the kingdom of God and blah. Blah. Blah.

Except, she's seen the pictures of Rachel and her dads in her locker, their glossy faces always stretched out in wide smiles, and she knows that you can't fake that kind of love, and that Rachel's family is one of the best she's ever seen, regardless of any of their sexual orientations or not.

A door slams shut downstairs, and someone calls out, "Honey, I'm home!"

About .5 seconds later, Lucy whispers, a bit frightened, "_Is that your dad?_"

And Rachel laughs, "Yes. You should go and meet him."

"But I – " She furrows her brow and laughs at what she's about to say. "I'm scared."

"He's harmless."

"Well, yeah, to _you_, because he's your _dad _– "

"Just – " Rachel puts her hands on Lucy's shoulders, pressing her down and effectively halting the words coming out of her mouth. "Relax. And let's go."

"I – okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah, okay."

…

"You're not relaxed." Rachel whispers out of the side of her mouth before she forks a bell pepper into her mouth.

"Sorry." She says back, half-sarcastic, and half-actually sorry.

"So, Lucy." Hiram – Rachel's Dad – starts, and he brings a napkin up to wipe his mouth. "How did you and Rachel meet?"

Which is kind of a weird question, the way it's worded.

"Oh, um – " She looks down at her untouched food, and she feels really bad after a second. Rachel made a comment a few minutes ago about how they usually get take-out and rarely ever cook. "Well I got, uh, slushied and she helped me – she sort of cleaned me up, I guess."

"Heart of gold, our girl."

"Mm, we raised her well." Leroy says, and leans over to peck Hiram on the cheek.

Lucy averts her eyes – to give them some privacy – and then pushes a forkful of food into her mouth.

But then she turns her head and sees Rachel look away with a small frown and it makes Lucy want to throw it all up. Right there.

"This is really good." She decides to say instead.

Leroy smiles. "If you're just being polite – "

Lucy stammers, "No, I – of course not."

"You've hardly touched your food, is all." Hiram glances at her plate. "Not even a dent."

"I just – I – um. Had a big lunch."

Rachel scoffs next to her, and then she's trying to figure out how to tell Rachel to not even try and touch on that right now without actually _saying _it and without making it completely obvious.

She nudges her calf into Rachel's harshly and then feels the glare that Rachel shoots her on the side of her head. "It's delicious. Really. I'm just – yeah."

Leroy chuckles. "No need to be nervous, kiddo."

That makes her falter a bit, that _kiddo_, and she doesn't know if it's because she's a senior so she's really obviously _not_ a _kiddo_, or because of something else.

"I'm not, I – I'm not."

Rachel wipes her mouth and then grabs her plate, scooting back from the table. "Can we be excused."

Hiram nods, "'Course."

She takes her still mostly-full plate and follows Rachel into the kitchen. She sets the plate on the counter, pretty sure that throwing all that food in the trash would be a little more than impolite.

"That wasn't so bad, now, was it?"

Lucy snorts. "I was a stuttering idiot."

"You were nervous, it's – "

"No, it's not." She doesn't mean to raise her voice; it just sort of does it itself. She rubs a hand over her face and then rubs at her eyes under her glasses. "I'm – sorry, I – shit."

"It's fine."

No, it's not fine, but Lucy is just going to blame it on the fact that her stomach is rumbling for the plate of food on her left that she's not going to let herself eat. "Okay."

Rachel grabs her hand and gently tugs her towards the stairs. "Come on."

Lucy follows, and then watches when Rachel shuts the door behind them before moving over and sitting on the bed. Her eyes wander to the corner and she laughs. "Nice elliptical."

"Thank you. It's an important part of my morning routine."

Lucy tries not to look at Rachel's skirt – and fails – before "It shows," falls out of her mouth and she has to physically restrain herself from reaching out and somehow trying to shove the words back into her mouth. "I mean – well, it does show, I don't mean that it-it _doesn't, _but I – "

"It's okay." Rachel says, and then laughs lightly. "Thank you, though."

"Yeah," and when Rachel doesn't say anything she says, "So. Um, what was that guy's name?"

Rachel's cheeks pink for about a millisecond before she schools her features into something remotely resembling mild confusion and asks, "What guy?"

"Rachel." Lucy says, and then Rachel huffs a moment later and crosses her arms over her chest.

"I...have no idea what you're talking about."

"Hey, come o – "

"Lucy."

Her smile falters and she's worried that she's actually upset her. "I – shit, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – um. Are you mad?"

Rachel sighs. "No, I'm not mad. It's just – I mean obviously, it's just a little crush and nothing is going to come out of it – but, thinking about it just makes me a little...well."

Lucy sucks in a breath at _crush_, and then almost sits down next to Rachel before deciding to just stand awkwardly in the middle of her room. She shoves her hands in her pockets. "So...I don't get to know his name?"

Rachel rolls her eyes. "Matt Rutherford."

…

She leaves about an hour later, and is about to get out of the car with a smile, but not before Hiram and Leroy shove a Tupperware container full of food into her arms while she shakes her head and tells them that she really can't accept it (like it's some expensive gift instead of some _leftovers_) but they shake their heads and insist.

Rachel gives her a high five and then smiles and says, "See you tomorrow," before Lucy closes the door and walks up the driveway.

She fishes her key out of her pocket and then waves when the silver car starts backing out into the street.

None of the lights are on, and when she steps up the stairs and past her parents room, the door is closed, and there aren't any muffled voices (or tipsy slurrings) so she just figures that they've gone to bed early.

The fact that they didn't even bother to call and ask where she was kind of hurts her feelings a little bit, but when she locks the bathroom door behind her and steps on the scale, it completely slips her mind.

She can't help but smile a little bit when she sees _158 _staring up at her.

But then her stomach growls, and she winces.

…

A/N: I'm not really getting much response from this – or, well, not as much as I'd hoped – so, I'm kind of debating on continuing this or not.

R&R.


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: Trigger warning for eating disorders and slight physical abuse.

...

Lucy knows that it's probably weird for a place to be one of your favorite places to go when you've only been there a grand total of one time – borderline _fucking crazy_, even – but right now, she can't really find herself to care.

She's on the floor with her arms tucked under her head, drifting in and out of sleep while she listens to the steady rhythm of Rachel's pen scribble back on forth on her bed. (They originally planed to study together, but somewhere along the line of reading about Chemistry, Lucy decided she'd rather lay on the floor and take a nap.)

She hears her name being called and she mumbles a "Hmm?", not bothering to open her eyes or turn her face away from the carpet.

"You're falling asleep on me." Lucy slowly opens one eye and looks at Rachel leaning over the side of the bed.

She slaps at the pencil that Rachel prods her arm with. "Sorry. I'm kind of like, exhausted," she pushes out in a light laugh.

Rachel's eyes narrow and her lips purse and her brow creases for a split second before her features are back to default Rachel, all sparkling brown eyes and upturned corners of the lips.

"What?" Lucy asks and when Rachel shakes her head with a slight look of confusion she adds, "What was that look for?"

"I didn't give you a look."

"I'm not stupid." Lucy says, and then pushes herself up into a sitting position before leaning back on her palms. "You gave me a look."

Lucy stares at Rachel while Rachel stares back, and she's almost sure that she's not going to answer.

But then, "If you'd eat something, I'm sure you wouldn't be so tired all the time," slips out of Rachel's mouth and Lucy's eyebrows raise at the same time that her eyes narrow, and she's more than positive that her face probably looks a little deformed.

She's also more than positive that she would have preferred it if Rachel had just kept silent.

So she just sort of snorts and then falls back onto her back softly and says, "You bring that up every chance you get, don't you?"

She surprised when Rachel snaps back, "You asked me what the 'look' was about and I answered you, didn't I?"

Lucy feels properly chastised – and she can practically feel the irritation rolling off Rachel in _waves_ – so she says, "Yeah. I – yeah," and then adds a much quieter, "Sorry."

Rachel softens and then says, "No, I'm sorry."

"I said sorry first."

"Can't we just both be sorry?" Rachel asks, and Lucy nods before scooting over as Rachel slides to the floor.

She lands cross legged next to Lucy, and Lucy can feel Rachel's knees pressing lightly into the outside of her arm. She glances up at the ceiling and just then notices the glitter scattered all around and assumes that it's supposed to look like the sky. (And she figures that it probably does, when it's dark outside and all the lights are turned off.)

Lucy looks over and watches Rachel reach out and take the frayed edge of her sweatshirt between her fingers and roll it around.

And it's just so weird how natural it seems. Like it's common occurrence for Rachel to just randomly reach out and fiddle with her (which, actually, it sometimes is, because even though Rachel respects that Lucy has some personal space issues, she's a _really _touchy-feely person).

Lucy wonders if she should feel obligated to do the same – like, trace the plaid pattern on her skirt or something – but that's just borderline _weird, _really, so she doesn't.

Vaguely, she hears the rumble of a voice in the background, and when she finds Rachel looking at her expectantly, she says "Huh?" and then blushes when she realizes that she kind of just grunted like a caveman.

"I said, you should get a new one." Rachel repeats, and then wiggles her finger through a hole in the pocket to prove her point.

"Oh." Lucy says. "Yeah, probably, but this one has, um. Memories and stuff, you know?" Memories of slushie stains and tons of gallons of Spray – N – Wash , but memories, nonetheless. "I can't just replace it."

"Okay," Rachel says, and then asks, "Are you staying for dinner?"

Lucy shakes her head and then pulls her phone out of the pocket that Rachel's not tinkering with and taps to her messages. "I've been given strict orders to 'not be home any later than 6:30'," she announces, and then turns the screen to Rachel so she can read the text from her mom.

Rachel's bottom lip juts out and Lucy feels her breath catch before she exhales it in a laugh and stabs Rachel's knee with the tip of her finger. "Stop it."

"So." Rachel says, and then turns her head to glance at her alarm clock before she says, "We have exactly one hour and forty-four minutes until you have to be home."

Lucy smiles. "Seems that way, yeah."

"What do you wanna do?"

"I'm content with whatever." Lucy just shrugs, her shoulders rubbing against the carpet before she crosses her arms over her stomach.

…

She doesn't know why she expects the house to be empty when she gets there, but it isn't, and, surprised, she makes her way into the kitchen and clutches one of the straps of her backpack as it slips on her shoulder. "Hi."

Her mom looks up from chopping something on the cutting board and gives her a small smile that seems almost warm and (gasp) motherly – not tight lipped and fake like she's used to – and returns her greeting before turning her attention back to the counter.

She asks, momentarily absent-minded at the strangeness of feeling comfort in her own home (how weird of a statement is that, really), "Is there a reason that I've suddenly gotten a curfew?"

Her mom glances at her before she answers, "You were out until after your father and I went to be, yesterday."

Lucy resists the urge to say, "I'm seventeen, and you were probably a little too tipsy to remember what time you even got home last night, so that's a bunch of bullshit," and instead chews on the inside of her cheek.

"Right." She says instead. "Okay."

And then it's just her and her mom and a not-awkward silence that's occasionally interrupted by the slap of a knife slapping against the cutting board or the hiss of something in a pan.

"What are you making?" She asks, crossing her arms and leaning forward onto them. She doesn't know why she's asking because she knows she's not going to be eating anyway.

And that makes her think of her conversation with Rachel earlier and she yawns subconsciously.

"Stir fry." Judy throws bell peppers into a pan. "It should be ready soon."

"Okay."

She hears the door creak open and then slam shut in the living room, and then heavy footfalls are slapping across the carpet and into the kitchen.

It's her dad, obviously she can tell, and like the flip of a light switch, something white hot and angry just flares up inside of her.

"Hi, honey," Judy says, and Russell moves over and kisses her on the cheek. "Good day?"

He waves his hand, "The usual," and then turns to Lucy and asks, "Aren't you going to say hello?"

She doesn't trust herself to open her mouth without the words _fuck _or _screw you_ falling out, so she clenches her jaw and grinds her teeth and forces herself to put her head down and stare a hole into the counter top.

After a few seconds, she doesn't even have to look up to know that her mom's eyes are flitting nervously between the two of them (like they're in some sort of standoff, and she's waiting to see who's going to draw first) while also trying to finish making dinner. Lucy hears her dad's shoes tap against the floor as her moves towards her, and then her chin is jerked up harshly by his large hand.

His eyes flash dangerously and she glares back.

It hits her like two slushies to the face, and she sucks in a sharp breath when she notices that it's almost like looking into a mirror; his narrowed eyes are the exact same shade of hazel hidden behind her glasses.

She remembers the other day, when Rachel had to ask her if she was alright with gay people because her dad so obviously wasn't – _isn't_, and how she bit back that she _wasn't _her dad, and –

She figures that if there were anything in her stomach, she would have thrown it up.

"When I speak to you," he starts, slowly, like she's a toddler, and she grinds her teeth harder before she blows a harsh breath out of her nostrils. "You will answer me."

Lucy swallows heavily as the taste of bile creeps up the back of her throat.

"Do you hear me?" He says, and she feels the fingers around her jaw tighten.

Lucy nods, and his looks softens a bit before he releases her and steps around the island to the fridge. "Go to your room."

She slides off the stool to the clinking of wine glasses being removed from the cupboard.

…

She doesn't know what compels her to do it, really. One moment she's lying on her bed and the next she's staring at her phone and the message that she's just typed up and sent.

**hey.**

And then she laughs because for some reason, that little three-letter word looks so much more bleak that it really should.

**Do you miss me already? I just saw you not forty-five minutes ago!**

**oh. sorry.**

**I was kidding. What's up?**

For normal people, that wouldn't seem like a loaded question, but to Lucy it kind of does. Just a bit.

_Well, not my mood! _is a stupid response, even for her, so she settles with he standard; **not much. you?**, and then rolls over onto her back and sighs at the ceiling.

**Nothing for me, either. I'm in the exact same place I was when you left.**

Lucy smiles, and then pictures Rachel sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back against the side of her bed and her head turned down towards her lap, typing away on her phone.

Not for a lack of anything to say, but because there're too many responses bouncing around in her mind for her to pick just one, she says, **haha, cool. **and then presses send and instantly regrets it.

**Not to be rude, or to pry (because I noticed that you don't like that. At all.) but are you alright?**

**fine. sorry.**

**No, no need to apologize, you just seem a little...**

**not alright?**

**Right.**

And she's _not _alright, but she's also not _not _alright.

Because, yeah, her jaw is starting to smart a little bit, and it's pulsing in the shape of big fingers all up and down her face, and she's hungry to the point that it's actually causing her _physical pain_, but –

She's alright. She feels alright, at least at this very moment she does, and she figures it's probably because of a girl that's ten miles away sitting cross-legged on her floor in a short plaid skirt.

She thinks of Sam for a moment, and then is hit with a wave of guilt when she realizes that _he's_ the one she should be texting and that _he's_ the one that should be asking her if she's alright and that what _he's _doing at this very moment is what she should be trying to visualize, but it's not. It's all Rachel, and she feels horrible about it.

But it was Rachel's name that she scrolled to in her contacts and that _hey._ that she sent, that was to Rachel.

That has to mean something. It just kind of _has _to.

…

When she looks in the mirror in the morning, there's a light purple blot near her jaw, and when she pokes at it with her finger, it pulses with a tiny pain.

She's kneeled over in front of the toilet and dry heaving seconds after her mind comes to the conclusion that those are her father's fingers bruised on her face, and when she feels tears drip from her chin and into the toilet bowl, she doesn't know if it's from the pain of the heaving or something else.

She doesn't think he meant to do it – he was just disciplining her, because that's what parent's do when their children are disrespectful (and she kind of did deserve it anyway, really) – but then she's dry heaving again because she's justifying the fact that her father just caused her intentional physical pain.

He didn't mean to do it, though, she thinks, deciding how to style her hair so it hides her cheek.

He didn't mean –

He _couldn't _have meant to.

…

A/N: A huge thank you to all those who reviewed/favorited/followed this story.


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: Trigger warning for eating disorders and slight physical abuse.

...

The first thing that happens: Sam says, "Holy shit, Luce, what happened to your face?"

The second thing that happens: Rachel says, "Is that a _bruise_?"

The third thing that happens: "Dude," Sam brushes her hair away softly. "That looks like a giant _hand _on your _face._"

Lucy flinches and smacks Sam's hand away and he says hurriedly, "Oh, my god, did I hurt you? Shit, I hurt you. Shit, I'm sorry."

"Okay, um. Number one, I tripped in the living room, number two, yes, it is, number three, I know it does and I have no idea why, and number four, yes, a little bit, and it's fine."

"You tripped?" Sam says, and raises his eyebrows so that they disappear underneath his hair. "Must've been a fall."

"It was, yeah."

"But are you alright? Should we take you to the – no! My dad's a doctor, should we take you to him?" Now Rachel's talking about two miles per second, and Lucy interrupts her with a, "Geez, calm down," while Rachel's figuring out the shortest route to her house from the school.

"Please, just – I'm fine. It was just like, a freak accident or something."

"Well, no." Sam corrects, and he falls into step on one side while Rachel falls into step on the other. "A freak accident is a spaceship crashing in like, the middle of Central Park or something."

"Well, then it was just an _accident_." Lucy says, and when they reach the door to her first period, she turns and looks up at Sam as he worries his bottom lip between his teeth.

"Would you calm down, please? You're acting like I got hit by a _truck _or something – "

"Don't say that." Sam says lowly and Lucy softens. "And go like, knock on wood later. Or whatever. But you have a _bruise _on your _face, _and that's – I don't know. It's weird."

"It's not." Lucy says, and then bites her lip. That's a lie, because it's weird how she can cover up so many things at a time with such practiced ease.

…

Taking notes is literally one of the worst parts of Lucy's life, especially since her teacher talks like Rachel would if she was on speed and started rambling.

She rests her head on the heel of her palm and leans against it before she hisses quietly at the soft throbbing that pops up seconds after.

She doesn't know what compels her to listen to this particular conversation (since there's always someone that's talking, really), but she guesses it's either a sick twist of fate or God trying to tell her something. (She goes with the first choice.)

"I wonder if she just like, saw that she was so ugly and then socked herself in the face."

"It does kind of look like a hand, huh?"

"Yeah."

"You guys are dicks," and then laughter.

She gets her palm and smashes it against her jaw until it hurts.

…

It's just occurred to her that it's Thanksgiving break, like officially, and Lucy says that out loud while Sam tunes his guitar and Rachel is (presumably) thinking of a song to sing that Sam will know how to play.

"I know. It's weird." Sam says, and then plays a chord before he asks, "Do you know what you're doing?"

"Um, going to my sister's." Which, she doesn't actually _know, _but it's what they've done ever year since Frannie left for college and she figures that there aren't any good reasons for them not to do the same this year.

"That sucks." Sam says, and Lucy is inclined to agree, because forcing her to be in the same house as twenty aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws is like asking her to write a suicide note and then pushing her off a bridge. (That was a really weird analogy, but whatever.)

"You listen to _The Naked and Famous_, right?"

"When I'm in a hipster mood, yeah." Sam snorts, half-joking, and Lucy smiles while Rachel laughs. "But like, if you're asking me to play it – I mean, I can – but it's going to have to be acoustic, and I'm going to have to kind of wing it, so – "

"That's fine. If you're alright with winging it for a second." Rachel says.

"Yeah." Sam nods, and then counts off quietly and plays a few bars before Rachel's voice comes in.

Lucy wonders if there will ever be a time when Rachel's singing won't leave her feeling like she's floating, falling, flying, exploding, and being crushed all at the same time.

…

"So, what do you even do for Thanksgiving?" Sam asks, wiping Big Mac sauce off the corner of his mouth (his parents were working late and none of them wanted to risk burning the house down by cooking something, so they hopped in Sam's truck and drove to the closest fast food place). "Because like, you're Jewish, and vegan, so..."

Rachel shrugs. "We do what everyone else does; cook dinner, give thanks, eat dinner, visit my grandparents. We just have turkey _and_ tofurkey at the dinner table." She pushes her empty salad container aside.

"Oh." Sam says, and then nods, and then takes a sip of Pepsi.

…

Lucy hates the holidays with a deep, fiery, burning, scalding, evil passion. Mostly because she hates her relatives with a deep, fiery, burning, scalding, evil passion, and the holidays are basically just an excuse for everyone to get together and have dinner and occasionally open presents together so they can seem like a loving, caring, bonded family.

Which, they're not, because most of their concerns aren't what to bring to dinner or what to get little Johnny for his birthday, it's trying to figure out which aspects of their lives are better than everyone else's and what they can brag about.

Their favorite game to play is Point Out All of Lucy's Shortcomings in a Subtle Yet Overly Obvious Way, and Lucy would be offended if she wasn't so angry at the fact that literally no one seemed to see something wrong with the fact that grown men and women were picking on a seventeen year old.

"I'm gonna go find Fran." She mumbles to her mom and then slips from the table and into the kitchen.

Fran's pouring a glass of water, and when Lucy says, "Hi," she jumps, and some of it splatters on the counter.

"Oh – hey, Luce." She chuckles, and reaches for the rag slung over the handle of the oven. "You scared me – Jesus, what happened to your face."

"I fell. And sorry." Lucy says, and then pulls a stool up the the counter. _What's up_ sounds too casual, which is weird (except not really) because it's her fucking _sister_, but she says it anyway, and when Fran raises an eyebrow with a slight smile, Lucy shrugs.

Fran sighs. "Not much. Just – " She shrugs, and Lucy offers a small (barely there) smile.

"Yeah."

"You're looking thinner." Fran says.

"Yeah."

"Good for you."

"Yeah." Lucy nods, because there's nothing good about an eating disorder, no matter how much thinner she does look.

"Did you like dinner?"

_I didn't eat it _is what Lucy thinks, but she says, "I – yeah."

"It was...good, right? I've never – that was the first time I ever cooked a turkey, so..."

"It was fine. Yeah, it was good."

"Good." Fran smiles. "How's um – how's school going?"

"Fine, um. Yeah it's – " Lucy shakes her head, shrugs. "It's whatever. How's...uh. Life?"

Fran nods. "Good. We're – " She stops, and then smiles over Lucy's shoulder. Lucy twists around and watches Tom (her brother in-law, really, but that's weird to say) shoot his wife a smile before turning back to the dinner table and throwing his head back in a laugh. "We're good."

"That's good."

Fran nods and Lucy chews on her lip before Fran says, "I miss, you, kiddo."

Lucy nods and smiles – a real smile – before nodding and saying, "I – yeah. Thanks. I miss you, too." Which isn't a complete lie, because she does sometimes, like when she comes home from school and the house just seems so empty and so cold and lifeless it just –

Fran leans in close. "Can I tell you a secret?"

Lucy blinks. "Sure."

She watches her sister bite her lip before she whispers, "I'm pregnant."

If Lucy was drinking something, it would have been all over the counter and in Fran's face, and if she were eating something, she would have been choking and coughing while clutching at her throat.

"That's – wow." She manages to squeeze out of her throat and Fran grins a huge grin when she responds, "I know!"

"It's – is it a girl or a boy?"

Fran shakes her head, and then places a hand on her stomach. "We want to be surprised."

Lucy nods.

It's a bit of a wake-up call because _her sister's having a baby and holy fucking shit she's going to be an aunt._

In a way, it is a little sad, because Fran got married at 20 and is going to have a baby 23 and it all just seems so fast and so sudden that Lucy's having trouble trying to grab back on to reality.

What makes it even more sad is that Fran got married at 20 and is going to have a baby at 23 and that's exactly how her (their, whatever, Lucy's really not eager to claim them, anyway) family would want it.

Lucy kind of feels like Fran's sort of settling into a Housewife Life before her actual life has even really began.

But that's not something she can say _out loud_, so she just settles with an, "I'm happy for you," because – well.

That's really the only thing positive that she can say.

…

Turns out, she really didn't have to keep the secret that long, because before everyone started heading home, Frannie and Tom announce that they're pregnant.

Her mom starts crying and covers her mouth before moving over to embrace her sister while her father and Tom share a handshake (like they were closing a business deal) and trade smiles.

"Lucy, you're going to be an aunt!"

She smiles.

…

**my sister's pregnant.**

**What**

**my. sister. is. pregnant.**

Lucy pushes her glasses up onto her forehead and rubs her eyes before grabbing her vibrating phone and opening her messages.

**I dont kno if I say congrats or sory**

***sorry**

**me either.**

And she really didn't because on one hand, she was going to be an aunt, but on the other hand...

She _was going to be an aunt._

**How about 'tht's cool'?**

It's not _cool_, not really, but Sam's trying, and, shit, she appreciates it.

**Idk Luce how r u feeling tho?**

She's feeling kind of scared, actually, and she's feeling like Frannie is throwing the life she wants away for the life she's supposed to have and she feels like this child – no, her future niece or nephew – is going to cement her sister to a life that she's not sure that she wants.

Those are horrible things to think and feel, but they're also thoughts and feelings that have a little bit of truth to them, Lucy thinks.

**i don't know**

She remembers when they asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up in preschool and she said, "I wanna be just like my big sister!"

She's really not so sure about that, right now.


	13. Chapter 13

A/N: Trigger warning for eating disorders and very slight physical abuse.

...

There's a knock on the door the next morning that makes her jump, and she composes herself before she says, "Come in."

She doesn't expect Sam's head to peek in her room, but when it does and he smiles at her, she smiles back and closes her book. "Hey."

"Hi." He says, and then steps into her room and over to the bed before plopping down beside her. "What's up?"

She shakes her head and then watches him push hair out of his face before she says, "Not that I'm not happy to see you, but..."

"Why am I here." He finishes. "Right. Well. You seemed upset last night, you know? And, I mean, I couldn't just..." He shrugs.

Lucy smiles. "Thanks, Sam."

He shakes his head. "It's whatever. But like, you're going to be an aunt?" He says, and those words kind of suck all of the warmth out of the atmosphere of her room. She feels her face drop and her throat constrict and then all of a sudden she's huddled into the chest of Sam's jean jacket and her face is damp.

"Hey, it's okay."

"I don't...even know..._why_...I'm crying." Is what she says between hiccups, and she wonders if Sam understood her through the blubbering.

Or, well, she doesn't know why she's crying about _this_, because (as dramatic and whiny as it seems) there are things for her to be crying about.

But then again, her sister has been throwing her life away, and this baby, _her niece or nephew, _is like the seal on the envelope holding Frannie's fate. The baby is unhappy-life insurance.

Sam's hand is rubbing up and down her arm, and she's actually kind of worried that she's gotten snot on his jacket.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Is what she says when she pulls away and wipes her face on her sleeve and Sam, god bless him, is just staring at her with worried eyes, completely oblivious (or just choosing not to notice) the face-shaped stain on his chest. "Geez, I'm a mess."

"Just to clarify." He says. "What kind of tears were those? Because they really didn't seem like happy ones."

Lucy doesn't even _know_, so she says, "It doesn't matter – and I'll like, throw your shirt in the washer or something if you want me to."

Sam waves it off ("Nah, it's fine,") and then flips his hair (which makes Lucy snort) and says, "So, other than that, I guess, how was Thanksgiving?"

"Like every other holiday. Yours?"

Sam shrugs. "It was good. Stacy and Stevie were sad because like, we only had turkey instead of turkey _and _ham, but you know."

Lucy nods, and then wonders what Rachel did for a second, because she had neither turkey _nor _ham, and when Sam laughs and says, "I dunno, probably chilled with her dads and stuff," she realizes that she was thinking out loud.

"Oh. Yeah. Probably." She says, and right after that, "Can we go to your house?" partly to change the subject, and also because it feels like forever since she's been over there.

"Of course – hey, I'll text Rachel and see if she can come over, too – we have some leftovers, too, so..." he pauses for a second, and looks at Lucy, and she clenches her jaw and moves over to her closet. "Never mind."

She just kind of wishes he didn't say anything at all.

…

She can't figure out how to solve her problems (well, she actually needs to figure out what all of her problems are, first) and so the logical thing to do is shoot animated undead. The rumble of the controller just sort of vibrates all of her emotions into numbness for a while.

"I see the appeal." Rachel starts, and Sam glances back at her before returning his focus to the screen. "Really, I do, but how you two can sit there hour after hour – "

"Has it been that long, really?" Lucy asks, and then pulls the left trigger.

"I – well, no, it's only been an hour and a half."

"Huh."

The round ends, and Sam's stomach growls, and he blushes and says, "Sorry," before getting up and stretching. His bones pop.

Lucy and Rachel head downstairs with him, despite his protests that "he's a big boy and can heat up some food by himself".

The microwave hmms while Lucy absently drums her fingers on the counter, and her lips tilt up into a small smile when she hears Rachel start humming a few bars under her breath next to her.

"You sure you don't – "

"I'm not hungry."

"You sure?" Rachel says, and Lucy looks over, ignoring the slight fluttering in her stomach when her eyes search out Rachel's, and frowns.

It's petty, and so stupidly stupid that Lucy can't even believe she does it. "Hey Sam, do you know Matt Rutherford?"

"The football player."

"Yeah."

"Honestly." She hears Rachel huff under her breath, and it's so..._something_, that she forgets to be annoyed with her.

"Why?"

"Um." Lucy says, and then looks at Rachel who answers, "I..._like_ him."

"Oh." Sam says, and then nods before removing his food from the microwave and setting it on the table. "That's cool, I guess. He's a nice guy, you know. Kind of quiet, but whatever."

"Yes, I know, and I find that endearing."

Lucy almost, _almost _says, "I'm kind of quiet too, you know," but then she hears Sam say from the fridge, "Damn, we don't have anymore pie," and then watches him start rummaging through the cabinets.

Lucy turns to Rachel and opens her mouth to say something like _sorry, _but then realizes that she's not exactly sure what she would be saying sorry for.

Instead she stutters, "Um. Hi."

Rachel smiles, and Lucy just kind of softens. "Hi."

"Um." Sam says, and they both look at him turning a box over in his hands. "You guys wanna bake a cake?"

…

She doesn't know why, but the image of Rachel cracking an egg over Sam's head (and proclaiming "Vegan Power!") won't escape her thoughts.

Which was weird, since Sam used egg whites because his mom said they were healthier and because Lucy was pretty positive that Rachel wouldn't crack _anything_ over _anyone's_ head, least of all an egg over Sam's.

"Three cups of flour." Rachel reads from the box.

"You know, I'd get right on that." Sam says, shoulder-deep inside one of his cabinets. "If I could find a measuring cup."

"You don't bake often, do you?" Rachel crosses her arms, amused.

"How could you tell?" Sam grunts.

Lucy's eyes catch the flour bag sitting next to the silver mixing bowl, and she's struck with something an urge so childish and juvenile that there's no way she'll be able to _not _do it.

"Rach." She says, and as Rachel swivels around to face her, Lucy flicks a handful of powdery flour into her face.

Lucy just grins while Rachel sputters with her arms half-raised in the air. She hears Sam bump his head on something and mutter, "Shit."

"Did you just – " Rachel finishes her sentence by digging into a bag and flinging more flour at Lucy's face.

Before she knows it, the kitchen is bathed in a white fog and her glasses are caked and there's flour in places that flour should _never_ be.

"Payback sucks, doesn't it!" She hears from somewhere close before arms wrap around her neck and a hand drops powder down the back of her shirt. "How does defeat feel?! Huh?!" Rachel's voice says into her ear from behind.

She wants to say, "Pretty damn good," because those arms are giving her a crazy kind of warmth (mostly in her cheeks) that she's not familiar with. She swivels around in Rachel's arms and smiles at the glint that she sees in those brown eyes.

"I win." Rachel declares, proudly, and with the white streaks all over her face, Lucy thinks that she's just about the cutest thing she's ever seen.

Or, wait –

But then Rachel's palm is on her cheek and her thumb is rubbing back and forth – over her bruise (which is mostly gone), and some slight pain appears when the feather-light touches cease for a second.

"Um. What are you doing?" It comes out breathless, and a lot more weirded-out than she actually is (which is not at all).

"Oh. You had...flour on – on your – um – "

Just then, Sam pops up from his cabinet clutching a measuring cup and then says, "Oh."

Lucy hopes he said it because of the current state of his kitchen, and not because Rachel's hands dropped guiltily from her shoulders as soon as he came in sight.

…

By the hums of affirmative coming from both Rachel and Sam, Lucy guesses that the cake is (surprisingly) good, despite having to open another bag of flour to actually have enough to start baking it.

Sam takes his and Rachel's plates over to the sink and starts rinsing them when Rachel calls Lucy's name.

"Hmm?"

"I'm sorry if I – well I know you don't really like to be, um, touched, and if I over-stepped any boundaries or something..."

Lucy wants to tell her that if that's what over-stepping boundaries are, then Rachel can over-step away, but instead she gives her a slight smile and says, "It's okay."

"Okay."

…

She's back home a few hours later, and when she greets her dad when she see's him sitting on the couch, he sighs and says, "Hello."

No _where were you all day, _no nothing.

Lucy wonders what he would do if she knelt down in front of him and pointed at the slight yellow blots on her face and yelled, "Do you see this? You did this, it's in the shape of your fucking hand."

He'd maybe smack her. Or calmly tell her to go to her room. Or scream and yell (and tell her that young lady's don't use that type of language, and neither do good Christians, and that he doesn't know what she's talking about, those bruises on her face, because he doesn't see anything) until his face was red and angry, like someone's cheek after they've just been slapped.

She's never seen her dad like that. She kind of wants to, because something about her father quivering in rage and sputtering in anger just seems so interestingto her.

But she doesn't. Instead she goes into the kitchen and opens the fridge and is surprised to see a salad with plastic wrap over it with a tiny sticky note bearing her name and a small smiley face.

It's her mom's handwriting, and for some reason imagining Judy scribbling _Lucy_ and (after pausing a second and taking a sip of her wine) a hesitant smiley face makes her lips curve up slightly.

…

It's about 11:30 and she's just drifting off to sleep when she hears something hit the other side of her bedroom wall and shatter. She's wide awake now, and maybe a little bit frightened, because for a few moments it's just deafening silence.

But then there's the low rumble of voices where the shatter just came from, and Lucy creeps over before she presses her ear against the cool plaster and listens.

"God damn it, Russell, that's – " And then their voices quiet down, and it's just a quiet din of words that she can't understand.

She jumps, because there's a roar of "WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?" and then an equally loud shriek followed by a harsh _smack _that makes Lucy gasp and jump away from the wall, heart hammering and hands clenched tightly at her sides.

She's not stupid, not by any means, but when she thinks, and realizes that someone just got hit, and it probably wasn't her mother, her cheek throbs, and something burns in the back of her throat for a second before she runs and slams down next to the toilet in her bathroom.

She's heaving, but nothing's coming out, and her stomach is clenching and a sudden headache is pounding in tandem with her heart and she's thinking _oh my god, please help me, God_.

She breathing heavy, and she blinks down at the white tile of her bathroom which just suddenly starts spinning, and she doesn't think she's ever felt so sick in her entire life. Then she actually does throw up, and how it makes it into the toilet and not all over her and the floor she'll never know.

…

**A/N: Thank you for all the lovely reviews/alerts.**

**There will be a kind of sort of change of pace soon (like, next chapter, soon) so...yeah.**


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: TW: eating disorders. And I think that's the only one.**

**Also, I am not a med student or educated in medical sciences in anyway, so to anyone that is, some of the stuff in this chapter probably sounds ridiculous.**

**Nor am I educated in eating disorder treatment, and Google only helps so much.**

…

There's a beeping sound coming from somewhere far away yet close at the same time. She wants to ask someone to turn it off, but she can't, and probably shouldn't, because her vocal chords feel like they've been ripped to shreds.

She swallows, and then semi-gasps in pain because the back of her throat feels like someone took a sheet of sandpaper and rubbed it raw.

Her eyelids feel heavy, like ten ton weights are strapped to them to keep them down, but she manages to open them slightly, and then she sees a man clad in light blue scrubs fiddling with something next to her bed.

She tries to say, "Where am I?" but it comes out as more of a sharp, scratchy, puff of breath, and the man looks up from the machine before smiling at her.

"Oh." He says, and then presses a few buttons before he stands up straight and grabs something off the foot of her bed before standing over her. "Good morning, Lucy."

She wonders how the hell he knows her name, but then he says, "I'm Doctor Hill, I'm sure you remember me."

She does – vaguely, because her mind is a little fuzzy right now – and she's pretty sure that when she broke her arm back when she was about to start fourth grade, it was Doctor Hill and a short, squat nurse that set her arm back in place and signed her cast with smiley faces and gave her a sucker before they discharged her home.

She nods, and then regrets it, because her head flares up in pain. Doctor Hill must catch her grimace because he pats a gentle hand to her shoulder and says, "You should take it easy."

His eyes flit across the papers on the clipboard in his hands, and he hums sadly to himself before returning his attention back to Lucy, who guesses that she's probably staring at him with heavily lidded eyes.

"Visiting hours are right now." He says. "And there's tons of people that would like to come see you, if that's alright."

If she knew how, she would answer. Instead she just stares.

"Oh. Sorry." He laughs. "Um, blink once for no and twice for yes?"

She blinks twice, with difficulty, and he nods before he says, "Be right back," and exits the room.

Taking a deep breath, she looks around the room and takes in the plastic chairs, the harsh white of the room, and the window with a view of the abandoned building across the street.

It's a hospital room, obviously, and there's annoyance hidden underneath the fear that spikes up when she realizes that she doesn't know why she's there.

Her parents walk into the room a second later, and her mom bursts into tears while her dad goes stark white. They pull up chairs next to her bed and then just look at her. She looks back.

"Baby. My baby." Her mom says, and then pulls tissues from the box on the nightstand. She wipes her eyes with one, and then blows her nose with another before she balls them up in her hands and folds them on her lap.

It's silent after that, and Lucy is glad that she isn't expected to say anything – and that she kind of _can't _say anything – because she has no idea what would come out of her mouth if she was.

So Lucy stares, and Russell fidgets, and her mom cries softly before putting a hand on Lucy's cheek and just looking at her and sniffling.

Lucy has no idea how she looks, but it must be pretty bad, because when Russell raises his head and catches her eye, he clenches his jaw and then blinks, hard, five times in succession.

Her mom leans over and presses and kiss to her forehead and it _hurts_.

…

She can talk, but only small statements or questions at a time, and when she asks a nurse, "Do you have any water?" she swallows around the cough that tries to climb up her throat. The nurse nods with a smile and then assures Lucy that she'll "be right back."

There's a cup of water on the pull out tray a few minutes later, and Lucy reaches over and pulls the cup to her chest and tips the straw toward her mouth to take a sip.

Lucy could cry, her throat feels so much better.

Knuckles rap the door frame and she jumps, splashing some water down the front of her gown before frowning at the door way.

Doctor Hill says, "Oh, geez, sorry Lucy. But um, there's people here to see you...?" He leaves it open ended.

"Yeah." Lucy says, and he steps inside.

Rachel and Sam rush in, holding flowers and a teddy bear respectively, and Lucy is reminded of a stampede for a second. They slam into the two chairs left at her bedside by her parents when they visited yesterday.

"How are you? Oh my god – "

"Shit, Luce, holy shit – "

"Are you hurt? Oh, my god, of course you're hurt you're in a _hospital _– "

"You can't _scare _us like that – "

She would tell them – or, yell over them, with how loud they were talking – to calm down, if she felt like she could.

They both stop, after about ten seconds, and then just stare at her, and Rachel rubs at her eyes while Sam blinks rapidly.

"I – um." Lucy tries, because she really doesn't want to say anything that will make them dissolve into _tears. _"Hi."

It has exactly the effect she _doesn't _want, because about a millisecond after she closes her mouth, Rachel starts sobbing into her hands, and Sam rubs a comforting hand up and down her back while he rubs at his own eyes and says, "_Fuck_, Luce. Jesus."

"I'm sorry." She says, and she winces at the raspiness of her voice.

"Sam, do you _hear _her." Rachel says through the tears tracking down her face. "Do you hear her _apologizing_, Sam? Oh my god."

Lucy decides then to just not speak unless spoken to, because making them cry is just making her feel terrible.

Rachel wipes at her eyes, and Sam plucks a tissue from the nightstand and hands it over to her. Rachel smiles her thanks, and then wipes at her eyes before taking a deep breath and clearing her throat and saying, "Okay. I'm – I think I'm good now."

"Good." Sam says.

Lucy looks down and starts toying with the plastic bracelet wrapped loosely around her wrist.

"How are you feeling?" She hears Rachel say, and she shrugs, because the only thing she knows is that her throat hurts and there's a dull throbbing in the back of her head; she's kind of numb to the rest of her body. It's probably the morphine that's still in her system.

"How long have I been here?" She wonders quietly, and watches both Rachel and Sam hesitate before Sam answers.

"About um, three days, I think." He says. "Your mom called my mom this morning and I – well I called Rach, obviously, so – "

Lucy nods, and then shifts her legs under the covers. "You didn't have to – "

"Don't you dare." Rachel says, in a tone that's low and final and so not-Rachel that Lucy just blinks, taken aback.

"Don't you dare." Her voice cracks on the last syllable, and Lucy averts her eyes down to her lap.

She hears an "excuse me" and then the sound of a tissue being plucked out of a box and then footsteps into the hallway.

Then it's just her and Sam, and he scoots his chair closer until his knees look uncomfortably squished against the plastic railing of the bed. "You – " He starts, but then stops, and looks down at his feet.

"My mom told me, this morning, that you we're in the hospital, and I – shit, I dunno, I thought you got like, t-boned by a truck or something but you didn't, you were just – "

"Being my regular, stupid self?" She has to clear her throat in the middle of her sentence.

"I – " Sam sighs, and then pinches the bridge of his nose. He laughs, a light, humorless chuckle. "Yeah. Yeah."

They're both quiet, and Lucy considers asking him why she's here and what he thinks is going to happen, but she doesn't. And she doesn't know if it's because she doesn't want to have that conversation at all or if it's because she doesn't want to have that conversation with him.

Rachel chooses then to reappear, and puts on a slight smile despite her bloodshot eyes and slightly mussed bangs. She takes a deep breath. "I'm – I've calmed down, now, so – "

Lucy nods and then smiles and then feels Rachel's hands slide to hold one of hers.

"You – how are you? Good?"

"Yeah."

"You're sure?"

"I – yes."

Lucy watches Rachel's eyes dart around her face, looking for the slightest clue that she's not being completely truthful.

Rachel clears her throat, and then glances over her shoulder at Sam. "Could you – "

"Oh. Yeah, yeah, of course." He says, and then gets up and shoots Lucy a smile on his way out.

It's a painfully quiet silence for a few moments, and for a few seconds they do that awkward "averting the eyes" thing when they catch each other staring and then quickly look away.

"You know." Rachel starts, making Lucy look up from starting to stare a hole in the bedsheets. "I should – I _would _slap you if we weren't in a hospital and you weren't _hurt, _but – "

"I'm not hurt." Lucy interrupts quietly. "Do I look hurt."

"I didn't mean physically."

Oh. Lucy nods, and swallows. "Right."

"So, anyway – I can't, well, shouldn't, slap you so I – " Rachel gets up, and smooths her skirt down, running a hand through her hair. Lucy starts to lean back subconsciously when Rachel leans forward, but relaxes a little bit when she hears a whispered, "I'm going to hug you now, okay?"

"Okay."

And then there's arms wrapping around her neck and her arms are wrapping around Rachel's waist and she turns her head to the side, making her temple rest against Rachel's shoulder.

"I really am sorry." She says, and she figures she can talk a little bit more since she's basically whispering, now. "I didn't – I probably made you and Sam just – flip out, or something, and I – sorry."

"Hush."

She unwinds her arms and brings them back to her lap, then watches as Rachel wipes at her watery eyes again. "I'm sorry. You probably don't like crying people."

Lucy just shakes her head, and smiles.

Sam comes back in, and then they just talk, before Sam's mom texts him to come back home, and since he's Rachel's ride, they both have to leave. Rachel hugs her again, and Sam presses a kiss to her head which makes Lucy shoot him a weird look that he either doesn't notice or chooses not to.

"We'll be back." They say.

Lucy nods, and then watches them leave.

…

"How did I get here?" She asks the next day, and Doctor Hill finishes her daily check-up before throwing his stethoscope around his neck and laughing, "You don't know?"

Lucy shakes her head, and he feels around behind him for a chair before he plops down on it. "Well. According to your chart, your parents found you in your bathroom on Tuesday morning, and you didn't wake up, so they brought you here. And," he waves a hand. "Here we are."

Lucy nods, and then tugs on her bracelet and asks, "What's – um. What am I being treated for?"

Doctor Hill's face falls a little bit, and he crosses one leg over the other. "Malnutrition."

Lucy's head raises in a flash, and she fixes Doctor Hill with a panicked gaze. "Did you tell – "

"Your parents? Yes. I had to. Though they seemed like they already knew, anyway."

She's silent for a long moment, and then she quietly wonders, "When can I leave?"

He sighs. "Monday."

"Okay."

He nods, then smiles at the nurse that walks into her room carrying a tray of food.

"I'm not hungry." Makes it's way out of Lucy's mouth before she can even think to stop it, and she bites her lip and ducks her head slightly.

And then Doctor Hill is hovering over her bedside and mumbling, "You'll get there," while patting her lightly on the shoulder.

…

She kind of gets there before she leaves, because on Sunday she eats all three meals (hospital food really isn't that bad, or maybe it's just this hospital) plus a few snacks here and there and accepts a plate of pancakes with a bowl of fruit on Monday morning.

She guesses that her parents handle the discharge paperwork and whatever else they had to do, because when she's changed into the clothes that they've brought for her, they head straight for the door and to their car.

"You have an appointment tomorrow." Her dad says after about three minutes of silence in the car.

"For what?"

"Doctor Hill recommended we send you to a...nutritional therapist."

Lucy almost says _therapy is for __crazy people_, but then remembers Rachel telling her about her therapist, once, so she bites her tongue and swallows guiltily.

"Okay," is what she does say, and when she catches her dad's eye in the rear view mirror, he nods his head slightly.

Lucy rests her forehead against the cool glass of the window and sighs.

…

Her mom volunteers to drive, since the closest nutritional therapist they could find was in Columbus, and they weren't going to let her go alone.

It's an awkward uncomfortable silence, and Lucy's hand swings towards the radio when her mom says, "We were so scared, honey."

She freezes, pulling her hand back into her lap and taking a deep breath. "I know. I'm sorry for making you worry. I just..." She shrugs. "I don't know."

And then a warm hand is covering hers, squeezing lightly. She looks at her mom and feels her shoulders drop at how sad her profile looks.

…

She tells her mom, softly, that she doesn't have to wait for her, because she knows that typically therapist sessions last about an hour or so, and the waiting room doesn't look very comfortable; a short table with childrens' toys drilled onto the top (Lucy tries not to think about the fact that there have been kids here, kids young enough to play with things like that) and a TV that's playing some horrific soap opera.

Judy nods, smiles, and then leaves.

…

The receptionist shows her to the third to last room on the right, and she twists the handle hesitantly before stepping in. An older brunette lady smiles up at her, and when she hears to door click shit behind her she moves and sits on the couch opposite her.

It's a nice couch; leather and comfortable. She takes a deep breath and sinks back into it.

"Hello...Lucy, right?"

"Yeah. Hi, um..."

"Dorothy Meyers. But you can call me Doris. Or Meyers. Whichever you prefer."

Lucy likes her already, and she laughs, despite it not being that funny.

"So." Doris leans forward slightly. "Tell me about yourself?"

She's not expecting that question, not at all, and she stutters, "I – really? I thought we were going to talk about...uh."

"Your eating disorder?" Doris wonders.

"I – " Lucy bristles at that, visibly, if the suddenly upturned corners of Doris' mouth are any indication.

Doris smiles. "Forgive me for this, but you know the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one."

"I know I have one." Lucy says, and she does. "I just don't like to put it so, um, bluntly. Obviously. Whatever."

"Are you embarrassed?"

"I don't – should I be?"

"Thirty-one percent of people your age have eating disorders, Lucy. It's hardly uncommon."

"That's – thirty-one percent?"

Doris nods the affirmative and Lucy sucks in a deep breath. "Wow."

"Yes. Wow. It's quite...well, depressing, don't you think?"

Lucy says, "Yeah."

"Hmm." Doris looks at her for a long second, then asks, "What's your venom?"

"I – sorry?"

"Do you like to throw up, or – "

"Okay." Lucy says quickly. "Okay, um. No, though. I like not eating. Or, I don't like it, um." No, she really doesn't like it; she likes the flat plane of her stomach after a few weeks of doing it.

It's rounding out a little bit, now, and she crosses her arms over it self-consciously.

Doris nods. "Okay. Well, good. I can help you with that."

"Can you?"

"Yes."

She's supposed to be honest with therapists, right? "I – I don't think I want you to."

Doris' eyebrows raise slightly, as though she's surprised, but only just. "No?"

"I mean, I know it's bad for me, because I was in the hospital and – um, my mom told me that they had to give me a feeding tube and like, my throat still kind of hurts, and stuff."

"But?"

"But I don't – I didn't like the way I was before. Like, I looked in the mirror, and I just saw a big fat cell, you know?"

She nods, and smiles slightly, and Lucy says, "Um," when she realizes all that she's just said.

"What do you see when you look in the mirror now?"

"A slightly smaller fat cell."

Doris snorts, and Lucy feels herself smile.

…

It's the first time in a long time that Lucy has woken up not hungry, and it's a really nice change.

She goes downstairs to the smell of something that's not toast or eggs or some type of simple breakfast food cooking and briefly she wonders if she somehow wondered into the wrong house.

She turns the corner and says, "What the hell?"

She guesses her mom chooses to ignore her, because she just says, "Good morning, dear," and flips open a waffle iron.

"Um." Lucy says, and she takes slow steps toward the island before sitting down. "I didn't even know we had one of those?"

"Oh, me neither." Her mom says, with an excited sort of energy that makes Lucy smile despite herself. "But I attempted some almost-winter cleaning the other day and found this!"

"That's...oh." Is all she can really think of to say.

"Mhm." Her mom hums, and then pushes a plate across to her, a fork following shortly afterward. "Now, eat."

"I'm not – " She starts, and then bites down so hard on her tongue that tears spring to her eyes.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm – " She says at her mom's suddenly pale face before slicing a piece of waffle off with the side of her fork. "It's – it's habit, okay, I'm sorry."

"It's fine, dear. It's...I know."

She studies her mom for a moment longer, then averts her eye's when she catches sight of he white knuckled grip that she has on the counter.

…

Lucy feels like something akin to...well, a celebrity, if she's honest, when she gets back to school.

She's been gone for a while, so it's understandable; all the whispering and trying-and-failing-to-not-be-obvious staring.

Understandable, yes. But annoying.

…

"Okay, so. Let's discuss possible triggers. "

"I'm not a...a _gun_. Jesus."

"No, no, Lucy you misunderstand - " Doris says, but Lucy shakes her head.

She knows what a trigger is, she's not that uneducated, but she knows that talking about what makes her not eat will make her want to go a home and...

Well. Not eat.

But she doesn't know how to tell her..._nutritional therapist _that.

"I don't – I don't want to."

Doris raises her eyebrows. "Why not?"

"Because. I just don't." She huffs, a little immaturely, before crossing her arms over her chest.

"Okay. That's okay." Doris smiles. "We can talk about...your progress?" At Lucy's shrug, she continues. "You're on a meal plan, correct?"

"Yes."

"Right. And how's that going?"

Lucy shrugs, and then says, at the risk of sounding extremely ungrateful, "It's...it's kind of annoying, actually."

And it is, because every time she's even near the kitchen her mom pushes something into her face and is like 'here, eat this' or 'oh, it's 6:30, time for dinner!'

She loves that she cares. So much that she actually feels a little bit guilty whenever she says, 'I'm not hungry' (because she's actually _not_), because then she has to watch her mom's face fall into an expression that's somewhere between intense sadness and borderline depression.

"How so?"

"I don't know. My mom is always on me about what I'm eating and whether I've done this and whether I've done that and –" She sighs."God, I sound like a – like a selfish _bitch_."

There's a sick part of her that kind of misses Judy's alcoholic inattentiveness.

Doris leans back, and crosses her legs. "I wouldn't say selfish bitch. You're adjusting. It's understandable."

"So I'm an _adjusting_ bitch." Lucy doesn't think there's any part of this that could be labeled _understandable_, but she bites the inside of her cheek and nods anyway.

"If this is a – ah. Bad subject – because it seems to me like it would be – then I apologize in advance." Doris pauses. "But, it is sort of my job to ask you these things."

"Right. Okay."

"You always talk about your mother. I don't think your father's come up...once."

Maybe it's a mental thing – because the bruise healed a while ago – but her cheek tingles when she averts her eyes. "He's – I don't know."

"Is he not involved with your recovery?"

Lucy wants to say that that's pretty much how it's always been; not involved unless it affects him directly.

_You would think that his daughter having an eating disorder would affect him pretty fucking directly_, is what Lucy thinks as she lies, "No, he's very involved. I guess my mom just comes up more."

…

It's the first time that she's been back at Rachel's house since she's been in the hospital, and it's a lot more uncomfortable than she had originally planned.

Talking to Rachel is literally like maneuvering landmines, because talking or hinting or even fucking thinking about anything pertaining to her disorder – which is most of her life, at this specific moment in time – sends her either a.) into a dark, quiet silence or b.) into loud, heaving sobs, and Lucy isn't really jumping at the chance to deal with either of those.

"How are you doing?"

"Good. Better."

"Just...good?"

Lucy nods. "Yeah. Good isn't a bad thing, is it?"

"No. It's just...I was hoping for _great_. Or _fantastic_."

Lucy snorts. "Who even says fantastic anymore?"

"I don't know." Rachel says quietly, and Lucy bites her lips before nodding. "Do you – is there anything I can do to help?"

She smile softly. "God, Rachel. You do more than enough." She really doesn't do anything at all, besides just be _Rachel, _but honestly, to Lucy, that _is _more than enough.

But then Rachel just sort of nods, and then starts wringing her hands together, and Lucy's heart kind of drops at how much smaller than usual she looks, just standing there, leaning against her kitchen counter.

"Rach – " She says, and then gets up and moves over to her.

Rachel turns around and then opens the cabinets above her – for dramatic effect, maybe, Lucy thinks – and then asks, without turning around, "Do you want to bake a cake?"

Lucy laughs. "Don't you remember what happened the last time we did that?"

Rachel nods. "Right. Cookies, then?"

Lucy nods, and then watches Rachel as she ducks into her cabinets. "Hey."

"Hmm?" Rachel says, and then Lucy hears metal clanging as Rachel moves things around.

"Do I – " Lucy sighs. "I don't know. You just seem sort of...weird around me, lately?" It isn't meant to come out as a question, not really, but it reflects how Lucy feels at this moment; unsure and nervous.

Rachel sighs, but doesn't answer, and Lucy picks up the cookie dough and reads the back of it.

"Am I really?" Rachel asks, suddenly, and Lucy jumps a little bit. "Being weird?"

"Oh." Lucy says, like she's forgotten she's said it. "Yeah. Kind of. Ever since – um."

"You can say it. 'Ever since you were hospitalized'. I know." There's a bit of an edge to Rachel's voice that Lucy's not sure she's comfortable with.

She knows that she knows, but she also knows that mentioning it so directly and bluntly and nonchalantly hits at something inside Rachel. She can see it in the way that her small shoulders are suddenly tensed and her face less emotional than usual.

"I know. I'm just saying. You kind of – "

"Well, gee, forgive for not wanting to talk about my _best friend being taken to the hospital for an eating disorder_!"

Rachel's hands clap over her mouth, like she can't believe she said it, and Lucy watches her eyes start to tear up.

"Rachel, hey, Rach, come on." Lucy says, and moves over to remove her hands from her face. She wants to say, "Please don't cry, oh my god, I can't handle crying people," but figures that that might be more than a little selfish. Instead, she says, "It's okay – hey."

Rachel says something through her tears, but the only part that Lucy (barely) catches is, "and you're pretending that you're fine when you're _not_."

And maybe being hospitalized has given her some sick kind of confidence, but when Rachel goes to rub at her eyes, Lucy catches her wrist and then puts a shaky hand behind Rachel's neck and pulls her in for a kiss.

It's not what she expected, exactly. When she was little, she'd dream of her first kiss being show-stopping and ground-breaking, with explosions and fireworks and fucking volcanic eruptions and all that.

But it's not.

It's so much better, softer somehow, and the only things that she really feels is the flutter of butterflies against the inside of her stomach that double when she feels Rachel's lips pushing back against her own.

They disconnect silently, and Lucy's wide eyes meet Rachel's teary ones.

"I'm – um." Lucy says, and then releases Rachel's wrist before she steps back a little bit. "I don't know whether to apologize or not, so I – "

"Not." Rachel says. "I mean, don't. Apologize. It's not – it's not necessary."

"...oh."

Rachel shakes her head. "No just – come here," she asks, and Lucy steps forward hesitantly until her and Rachel are basically sharing the same air. A finger brushes the inside of Lucy's wrist, and then Rachel's hand is cupping her hip. Lucy reaches up to cup the back of Rachel's neck and then she stops and just stares for a second, trying not to let her breath hitch every time little puffs of air from Rachel hit her lips.

And then Rachel tips forward and up a little bit and they're kissing again. Lucy vaguely wonders if she put chapstick on this morning, but then Rachel adjusts slightly and Lucy is pretty sure that if she were a robot, she would be short circuiting.

"Hi," Lucy says when they separate, because that's literally the only thing that she can think to say that might make sense, right now.

"Hi," Rachel says back, and they both smile.

…

**A/N: R&R.**

**Guest (that helped with all the medical stuff and stuff): That cleared a lot of things up for me and will help to make this story a bit more realistic, so thank you!**

**Also, this used to be two chapters but then I combined them. So.**


	15. Chapter 15

Lucy doesn't know what proper "post-first-kiss-with-someone" etiquette is, but if she had to take a guess, she could bet that it's not, "Do you...um. We can go watch some TV?"

If Rachel is anything other than completely fine with it, it doesn't show, because she smiles softly and tugs on Lucy's hand and says, "Okay," and pulls her to the living room.

She sinks into the couch and then tells Rachel that it "doesn't matter," when she asks what she wants to watch.

It's just like a normal day at the Berry house, really, except...

Except if Lucy licks her lips, she can taste Rachel's lip gloss, and if she looks over at Rachel, in the glow of the TV, she can see a slight pink to Rachel's cheeks.

And if she thinks about what happened not ten minutes ago, it takes a ridiculous amount of effort not to smile like and idiot.

"I know you maybe don't want to talk about it." Rachel starts, and if she's talking about what Lucy thinks she's talking about, then she's wrong, because if it wasn't socially frowned upon (and if everyone in her life wasn't still a little concerned about her well-being) she'd climb on top of the roof and shout it to whoever would listen.

"But we're not—we don't have to pretend that this didn't happen, right?"

Lucy blinks in surprise and then she puffs out a, "What?" in a laugh/scoff.

"We don't have to pretend this didn't happen, right?" Rachel repeats, a little slowly, and Lucy would be offended if her eyes weren't flicking down to Rachel's lips every few seconds.

"No." Lucy says quickly, and then, "I—why? Did you...want to?"

There's something like insecurity that pops up in the back of Lucy's mind, and she chews on the corner of her lip in an attempt to focus on something else.

"No!" Rachel nearly yells, eyes wide, and Lucy laughs softly. "No, not—not at all. No."

Lucy nods, and, channeling Sam for a second, she says, "Cool."

…

**What do u mean u kissed Rachel**

**exactly that?**

Lucy figures she should have texted him a long time ago, but she also figured that that might have been a little rude, to kiss someone and then spend the rest of the time on the phone.

**Okay** Sam texts back, and then **can I come over or s/t this is a weird convo to have over the phone.**

Lucy bristles a little bit at _weird_,but then she remembers that it's _Sam_ and that's probably just his way of saying,** this conversation looks like it's going in a direction that my phone bill will not be able to handle.**

…

"Are you gay?" Sam wonders, and Lucy pauses, opening and closing her mouth for a second before mashing her lips shut.

She admires Sam's bravery for a second because, god, if she wasn't, and he'd asked that...

She wouldn't be offended, not in the slightest, but that just seems like a question that she _would_ take offense to, if this were another life.

But it's not. It's this one, and she's not sure how to answer his question because, no, she's never had a boyfriend, and she always figured it was because none of them ever had interest in her, and she's never had a girlfriend, either, but she knows that there was something about the way Rachel's lips pushed against hers...

It seems like the shit that people make _movies_ about and write books about and compose sappy love songs about.

She doesn't want to say it's _love_, because, really, how would she know, and adding love on top of all the other things going on with her wouldn't be a good idea. At all. She's painfully aware of that.

"I don't know." she finally says, because she doesn't. "I don't—maybe I'm Rachel-sexual?"

"She'll love that." Sam says, laughing slightly.

"Yeah." She bites on the outside of her bottom lip. "Do you think I'm gay, Sam?"

His cheeks puff up and then he exhales and pushes a hand through his hair. "I can't—jesus, that's not for me to say, Luce."

"I'm not asking you to tell me that I am." Lucy says, patiently. "I'm just asking you if you think I am."

"I don't know." He says, and Lucy sort of deflates. "You're not—I mean, you're not straight, I guess, since you enjoyed kissing Rachel but—oh, fuck. Your parents."

And Lucy sucks in a slight breath when she thinks about it because, yeah, her mom has been amazing lately (amazing to the point of being a little bit annoying, yes, but still), but if she just sits her down in the middle of breakfast or lunch or dinner (somehow she imagines having enough courage to bring it up over some food of some sort) and tells her that she thinks she's _gay_ or _feels like having relations with girls,_ then...

She's not sure. It might ruin everything and, wow, yeah, she doesn't want that, by any means at all.

Her mom she's not worried about, because Lucy feels the _love your children no matter what _vibe in Judy, barely there or not.

Her father, on the other hand, is another story.

God, she doesn't even want to think of what he'd do. Pop a blood vessel, maybe. Disown her, kick her out, make her start going to mass during the week, make her get and exorcism. _Kill her_, even, if he thinks it's that serious.

"If you want." Sam says, interrupting her thoughts softly. "Or if it comes to that, or something, you can live with me. I mean, if you come out and get _kicked_ out, and you tell them why, then my parents would probably let us share a room, no problem."

And, jesus, she feels like fucking crying. Partly because Sam is offering to share his _room_ with her if she needs it, and partly because the thought of her getting kicked out scares a lot more than just the shit out of her.

...

"I talked to Doris about you." Lucy says, and watches Rachel pause before she presses the start button on the microwave. "About us I mean. And what happened."

"Your nutritional therapist?" Rachel wonders.

"I know that's not – that those type of things don't really pertain to my _nutrition_, but – I don't know. Don't you think that anyone with _therapist _in their title probably has at least an BA in some sort of psychology?"

Rachel laughs, and then Lucy murmurs her thanks when a mug of apple cider is place in front of her. "No, but seriously."

"I don't know." Rachel shrugs, and then cups her hands around her cup and blows into it. "I don't really Google those types of things."

"What _do_ you Google?" Lucy asks. A part of her in wondering just for the sake of _wondering_, but most of her actually wants to know, however creepy that sounds.

Lucy watches Rachel's shoulders shrug up and then down. "I don't know. Barbra Streisand?"

Lucy laughs and Rachel smiles and the dips her head down to sip at her cider before Lucy asks, "Why did your dads move here?"

"You'd have to ask them, though I think they liked the small-town-ness of it." Rachel says. "Why?"

She shrugs, and then stares into her mug and swirls the liquid around a little bit before she says, "It doesn't – I don't know. It just doesn't really seem like the place people like them would settle down."

"What does? San Francisco?"

Lucy sighs and shakes her head. "That came out wrong. I meant, people in Lima are less Broadway and show tunes and more football and sports scholarships. Less...LGBT and more – "

"Homophobic?" Rachel supplies easily, and Lucy cringes a little bit and thinks of her father and sighs. "It's – I think, back in the day, people were a lot more horrible to my dads for being as open and proud as they are now. I guess staying was sort of their way of not letting people bully them away from."

Lucy nods, and then, "I'm gay. I think."

Rachel sputters a little bit, and Lucy pats her lightly on the back. "Oh?"

"Yeah." She says slowly. "I liked...I like kissing you. It was nice and I'd kind of – okay, I'd _really _like to do it again, actually, but – "

"I liked kissing you, too." Rachel says, cutting Lucy off softly.

"Are you gay?" Lucy wonders, and it's such a fucking direct question that she feels her cheeks color after half a second. "I'm sorry, that was – "

"No. Bi, I think, or – is there a word for liking people for their personality and not really caring about anything else?" Rachel wonders. "That's what I am."

"Pansexual." Lucy says, and then when Rachel gives her a sort of surprised look she mumbles, "I, uh, I Googled stuff, last night, so – "

"Yeah."

"Do you like me?" Is what Lucy asks next, and, wow, she feels like she's back in fifth grade, asking all of these questions.

Rachel looks amused. "I don't normally kiss people I don't like."

Lucy swallows and then nods, "Right."

…

"Do your dads ever get tired of me being here?"

Rachel smiles and reaches for Lucy's hand, tracing her finger lightly over her palm. "No."

"Are you sure?" Lucy asks, and then leans forward a little when Rachel pulls on her palm. "Rach?"

"Mhm." Rachel hums, and then pecks her lips lightly, and – wow, Lucy doesn't think that'll _ever_ get less awesome. "Do you ever get tired of worrying so much?"

"I don't know." Lucy says, because right now, she doesn't really know anything besides _Rachel's lips are literally the best thing._

For a second, Lucy is kind of weirded out by the sudden change in relationship from _friends_ to _friends with kind of not really benefits._

But then she realizes that she's actually wanted to do that for a long time, and that the little jumps in her stomach when she would see Rachel weren't jumps of admiration or platonic excitement. They were jumps that said, "wow, I kind of want to kiss her" too quietly for Lucy to hear, if she wasn't paying attention.

But she's paying attention now, and the great thing about all of this is that when something says, "wow, I really want to kiss her," she can lean forward and she can do exactly that.

So she does, and then she feels Rachel's hands grab her cheeks and pull her a little bit closer. She has to scramble up onto her knees so she doesn't break her back trying to lean forward too much and she steadies herself with one hand on the bed and one hand pressing lightly against Rachel's side.

Lucy feels a hum of something that may be contentment against her lips, and she laughs lightly against Rachel's mouth.

"Dinner's ready if you – "

Lucy didn't think it was possible to literally throw yourself somewhere, but she just damn near did it. She feels her cheeks heat up and Rachel lets out a tiny sound of embarrassment and Hiram just sort of stands in the doorway with his hand on the doorknob and his eyebrows to his hairline.

"Sorry." He says, and then seems to compose himself enough to chuckle. "Sorry. There's dinner, downstairs. Fajitas. Your dad made them."

"Okay, daddy." Rachel says softly, and Lucy doesn't look up from Rachel's comforter until she hears the door softly click shut.

"I'm sorry." They both say at the same time.

"For what?" Lucy wonders, and Rachel responds, "For my dad. You?"

"For, uh. For kissing you and getting us caught, I guess. I don't – you won't get in trouble, will you?"

Rachel tips her head back and lets out a loud laugh and then reaches over and crosses her wrists behind Lucy's head. "We're seniors, Lucy. I don't think – if they do care, it's a little unnecessary, because I'm sure most of the people our age have had sex multiple times by now."

Lucy feels herself blush again, and she squeezes her eyes shut and looks towards the half open door so she doesn't glance at Rachel's skirt. "We should – um. Dinner."

…

It's awkward.

Leroy is obviously the more protective (more intimidating) dad, because he keeps sending her little glances that she swears say something like, _you touched my baby girl; you die tonight._

Lucy suddenly feels an overwhelming amount of sympathy for the boyfriends that get caught kissing their girlfriends and then get chased down the street while the girlfriend's dad waves a shotgun in the air and screams something at him.

Lucy swallows. The Berry's don't really seem like gun people, so she should be safe.

Then again, she's also not Rachel's girlfriend, so yeah, she should be okay.

"You seem nervous, kiddo." Leroy says. "You're hardly touching your food."

Lucy pretends she doesn't see the way Rachel's head whips over in her direction.

"I...um." _Not hungry_ is on the tip of her tongue, because that would save her a lot of embarrassment, but, god, she doesn't need another _Rachel freaking the fuck out _episode, because she knows that's what would happen if she spoke. "Yeah. Kind of."

Leroy chuckles, and Hiram grins. "We didn't _poison _your food, if that's what you're worried about."

"It's not, I just – um. What's – do you have a standard procedure for walking in on someone defiling your daughter." Lucy puts her head in her hands because, wow, bad choice of words.

"Defiling our daughter?" Leroy raises an eyebrow and Hiram snickers into his water glass.

"That's was – I should rephrase – "

"I think she's worried we're going to chase her down the street with the poker from the fireplace." Hiram says. "Right?"

"I – was, um. I was thinking a shotgun, actually."

Lucy shrugs sheepishly when Rachel gives her a look. Her dads laugh.

"You might want to tell your girlfriend to tone it down on the rom coms, Rach."

"Oh, um, I'm not – " Lucy starts, but Rachel interrupts.

"We're not – "

"You're not?" Hiram says while Leroy raises both eyebrows. "...oh. I just – I assumed since, you know."

"I'm not – I don't think we're ready for that type of commitment." Rachel says slowly, talking to her dads but looking mostly at Lucy and –

Well, normally Lucy doesn't like people speaking for her, but –

The _ouch _kind of outweighs the anger.

…

Dinner ends, and then Lucy and Rachel are outside on the porch, Lucy fingering the keys in her pocket.

"I'm sorry about them." Rachel says, reaching out to play with the pocket of Lucy's hoodie. "That was – god, that must have been horrible for you."

"It wasn't." Lucy says. "Not really."

Rachel nods, and then, despite it being a very girlfriend-y thing to do, leans down and brushes her lips lightly against Rachel's. "I'll see you later?" She breathes.

Rachel nods, and Lucy waits until Rachel has closed the door and switched off the porch light before walking down the driveway to her car.


End file.
